Lethbridge Linux User Group

LinuxGuru writes "Looking at the changes IPv6 brings it seems that people will be discouraged from using firewall appliances to protect their home networks. With IPv6 every system in your home will be vulnerable to direct attack from hostiles on the Internet. As many of us know the M$ operating systems have no real protection from direct exploits that bypass their internal local firewall (what a joke) because these exploits attack the OS as a lower level and the only thing protecting most home users has been the firewall they get when they use a home router. The internal Windows security has never been affective at stopping the endless onslaught of crafted packet attacks that bypass these weak security systems.

All of this because the number of available IP addresses is dwindling down to nothing. You may ask why this is happening. It is happening because in no small part cell phone service providers did not want to put there cell phones on a subnet like they logically should, they want ever small device to have an unprotected direct link to the Internet. This will allow the service provider to remotely modify your cell phone, turn off features or even monitor your activity and location.

It is not just cell phones and Windows but Linux systems as well that will find themselves under attack. Almost all Linux systems today come bundled with all sorts of features that we rely on for our daily computing. Install any desktop Linux system and run netstat -nap to see an endless list of vulnerable sockets ready to accept any morsel of data that is sent to them. Most desktop install of Linux come with local MTA (Mail Transport Agents) to deal with local email from programs on the system, one small mis-configuration and your trusty Linux system will become a SPAM zombie. There are dozens of ways that we know external ports can be comprised like CUPS, FTP, and Samba to name a few, but there have been prof-of-concept remote exploits for services that should only accept connections from local sockets, like the X sockets that your graphical desktop uses.

For decades we have been protected by firewall boxes that keep all our devices safe. Well that safety is about to be taken away from us and all your dirty little secrets are going to be available to any black hat 1337'er out there. I personally will keep my home on IPv4 behind an IPv6-to-IPv4 router, with a firewall and IPv6 will be removed from all my devices. My cellphone does not have IPv6 and when it dies and I can no longer get a phone without IPv6 well maybe I just don't need a phone that badly, or maybe I will get a phone that I can hack to make the IP constantly changing to hide my location from the evil overlords. And as for Windows systems, well if you run Windows then you have become accustomed to this sort of abuse so you can still take comfort in that you do not suffer alone."