A Detailed Measurement View on IPv6 Scanners and Their Adaption to BGP Signals

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

canners are daily visitors of public IPv4 hosts. Scanning IPv6 nodes successfully is still a challenge, which an increasing crowd of actors tries to master. In this paper, we analyze IPv6 scanning under various network conditions to disclose the impact on scanning. We deploy four IPv6 network telescopes, including a reactive /48 telescope and a proactive /32 telescope that is periodically reconfigured by changing BGP announcements. We provide a longitudinal study of eleven months and classify the observed scanners w.r.t. their temporal behavior, their target and network selection strategies, as well as their individual tools, fingerprints, and correlations across categories. We find that silent subnets of larger covering prefixes remain mainly invisible, whereas BGP prefix announcements quickly attract attention by scanners. Based on our findings, we derive operational guidance on how to deploy network telescopes to increase visibility for IPv6 scanners and understand corresponding biases.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number15
Pages (from-to)1-23
Number of pages23
JournalProceedings of the ACM on Networking
Volume3
Issue numberCoNEXT3
Publication statusPublished - 4 Sept 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

TitleACM 21th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies
Abbreviated titleCoNEXT 2025
Conference number21
Duration1 - 4 December 2025
Website
Degree of recognitionInternational event
LocationThe Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
CityHong Kong
CountryHong Kong

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-3825-2807/work/191042023
Mendeley f5477180-9eed-302d-993e-a5dbecb3af99

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