Hacking threat to World IPv6 Day

Yesterday more than 300 organisations, including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, tested a new way of routing information around the Internet: Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), writes Technology Review.

Though the test run only lasted 24 hours, participants may learnt valuable lessons about how transitioning to IPv6 could affect their sites and their users. Spearheaded by the Internet Society (ISOC), World IPv6 Day is an international, coordinated effort to test this transition.

IT World reports that despite the large investments in time and money these major companies are making for the World IPv6 Day trial, there is nothing small businesses need to worry about on today.

Security experts are concerned that the 400-plus corporate, government and university Web sites participating in World IPv6 Day could be hit with distributed denial of service (DDoS) or other hacking attacks during the 24-hour trial, according to Network World.

“In the last five months, there has been a huge increase in DDoS attacks,” says Ron Meyran, director of product marketing and security at Radware, a network device company that is not participating in World IPv6 Day. “IPv6 is going to be even easier for attackers ... because IPv6 traffic will go through your deep packet inspection systems uninspected.”