IPv6 Adds Security to the Government's Computer Network

A friend of mine recently asked me about the security of our nations computers. He was mostly interesting win wondering why there seems to be so much hacking going on with the government's computers and why there is sensitive data has been leaked to other governments, and spies.

Overall, the amount of data leaked due to external hacking has been relatively low. Most of the leaks that have occurred are due to internal sources as they have allowed sensitive data to be bought, or they have for sake of conscious have allowed data to be given to the media. A prime example of this is the Wikileaks web site where data gained has been from a direct source. In the Wikileaks web site example, some of the data is speculated to have come from one person, and others are wondering if people are tapping into some government network lines, and pulling the data off the wire doing a man-in-the-middle type of attack.

In an article on July 19, 2010 Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin wrote an article titled "Top Secret America." This article exposes some of the government's top-secret world that has come about since 9/11. Because so many new facilities were built or expanded upon in order to create this large web of security and intelligence agencies, I can only speculate that these offices are tied together via the new Internet backbone of IPv6. The advantage of IPv6 is that this new standard has built in security and no backwards compatibility with IPv4. This lack of compatibility works in favor of the government in this area, as they can have two separate networks that are co-joined in only certain areas.

How does IPv6 help in lowering the risks to the government's network structure? First, the standard that we are using now IPv4 is not compatible with IPv6. Because of the lack of compatibility, computers need to have both IPv6 and IPv4 installed and connected to both networks in order to have access to data from both networks. Therefore, if the computer is only connected to an IPv6 backbone, then the only way that data from that computer can be accessed is from another computer running on the same backbone. The computer will not have access to IPv4 computers, at least not directly. IPv6 also includes IPSec security.

IPSec Security is an end-to-end packet security protocol was designed originally for IPv6. It was later modified to be used with IPv4. Since IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible, even running IPSec does not allow them to be compatible. IPSec not only ensures that the packet that was intended for computer X gets there, but it also ensures that the packet has not been tampered with, and that the packet went only to computer X and no one else.

Because IPv6 has built in security, and is the direction in which all devices will eventually be using, I can only speculate that this protocol being used to build out the latest government intelligence agencies. In using this technology, it is harder for someone to hack into the government files, this IPv6 should help keep the government safe from prying eyes. Most information leaks these days seem to be coming from inside sources, and not so much vulnerabilities in OS's or Internet browsers, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/08/ap_wikileaks_080510/

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/