[GTALUG] Linux hardening question

[Ansar Mohammed]

Again, please follow the thread, this is not about competency or capability
on IPv6.

This is a simple question on hardening a Linux system. My entire network
runs IPv6 also. But my home systems do not need to be hardened.

There have been many IPv6 only bugs and exploits including last years IPv6
ping of death on Cisco.
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160525-ipv6

The stack simply isn't as battle tested as IPv4.

Oh, and that growing portion of the internet that's IPv6 only is primarily
China.

What's your business reason for the additional risk of IPv6?

Does your application support IPv6?

Has your application been tested with IPv6?

Do you have users that are IPv6 only?

If you don't need it on a hardened system, you are just adding another
attack vector for no good reason.



On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 5:36 PM James Knott via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
wrote:

> On 06/29/2017 05:14 PM, Ansar Mohammed wrote:
> > It's not a matter of being afraid of anything. Security 101 tells you
> > to reduce your attack surface area.
> > I would not increase my attack surface area  just for the sake of being
> > an early adopter of IPv6.
> >
> > To be clear the conversation is about hardening. This is the right
> > thing to do.
> >
>
> Then you'll be hardening yourself out of a growing portion of the
> Internet.  I use  a browser addon called "ShowIP" which displays the web
> site IP address.  I can see a significant part of the sites I go to are
> now IPv6.  Also, if you don't know how to set up a firewall on IPv6, you
> really can't consider yourself capable of hardening anything.  Fore
> example, consider setting up a firewall.  On Cisco gear, unless you
> filter on address, you IPv4 and IPv6 rules are identical.  On other
> firewalls, such as pfSense, you can do both IPv4 & IPv6 with one rule.
> You can also have separate rules if needed, your choice.  Also, if
> you're not competent with IPv6, you'll never get some certifications
> such as CCNA etc.  They require you to know IPv6.
>
> BTW, here's the IPv6 address for gtalug.org:
> 2600:3c03::f03c:91ff:fe50:ea0a
> ---
> Talk Mailing List
> talk at gtalug.org
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
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