Modern enterprise perimeter firewalls and their VPN software are already capable of using IPv6, it just needs to be enabled and configured. Enterprises should start to enable IPv6 connectivity on their Internet perimeter and then establish IPv6 connectivity to their VPNs. The recommended approach that yields the best result is to take control of the situation by enabling IPv6 on the VPN and in the corporate perimeter.
That leaves IPv6 traffic with a direct path to the internet, thus bypassing any corporate internet-perimeter security measures.Įnterprises should face the fact that they already have IPv6-capable devices on their networks and in the hands of their mobile workforce so they should take an active approach to removing this security weakness. The security issue is that corporations often don’t apply the no split-tunneling settings on the VPN to include the IPv6 default route that is also in the VPN client routing table (::/0), represented in the diagram by the blue field on the laptop screen. Therefore, when the end-user has the VPN running, all their connection attempts to IPv4 websites hairpin through the corporate intranet for inspection. This IPv4 default route is inserted into the routing table of the VPN client, represented in Figure 1 as the red field on the laptop screen. This is typically done by advertising an IPv4 default route (0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0) over the VPN tunnel to the VPN client. With no split-tunneling, once a VPN connection has been established, remote devices cannot make a separate connection to the internet at large. Most corporate VPNs enforce what is called no split-tunneling to enhance security by forcing all IPv4 connections to traverse the VPN. All IPv4 traffic must go through the VPN tunnel and cannot directly access the internet, but IPv6 traffic, represented by the blue line, can. The red line represents IPv4 traffic that is directed through the enterprise to apply traffic inspection and security controls to internet-bound traffic. This diagram shows a typical enterprise VPN user laptop with an IPv4-only VPN tunnel established back to the corporate internet perimeter. The way IPv4 protections work is, once the VPN has been established, the VPN concentrator inspects traffic bound for the internet and blocks traffic bound for destinations judged out of bounds by the policies the enterprise has configured.
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They configure their VPNs to inspect only IPv4 traffic, which can leave mobile devices free to access IPv6 sites that could prove dangerous to business networks, devices and data. Phones, tablets and laptops used for remote access to corporate networks commonly support IPv6 as do broadband and cellular services they might use to access the internet.Īs a result, enterprises often don’t recognize IPv6 as a security factor. Many enterprises do not realize how often IPv6 is being used on devices that access their networks via VPN. There are solutions for IPv6 VPN breakout, but the first step is to understand it in order to appreciate its importance. Known as IPv6 VPN breakout, the issue is well known yet often remains overlooked. This leaves IPv6 traffic free to access the Internet directly without those controls being applied.
This hole stems from the fact that some of these remote-access VPNs are configured to inspect and apply security controls only to IPv4 traffic as it passes through a VPN concentrator without enabling similar protections for IPv6 traffic. Enterprises unaware of the role IPv6 plays on remote users’ devices run the risk that these machines might access banned sites despite using VPNs that are meant to restrict what they access.
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