TABLE OF CONTENTS Claims that IPv4 security was neglected by the founders are based on the argument that early IPv4 networks were insecure things strung together on trust between naive but ultimately honorable academicians. However, at the very start the Internet Protocol was defined as a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) standard, and security was certainly a consideration. Nevertheless, the IETF has given considerably more explicit attention to IPv6 security than was accorded to IPv4 during its early development.
The desirability and utility of authentication and security features at the IP layer have been debated for years. This chapter discusses how authentication and security, including secure password transmission, encryption, and digital signatures on datagrams, are implemented under IP through the Authentication Header ( AH) and Encapsulating Security Payload ( ESP) options. Before examining the IP Security Protocol ( IPsec), however, we will take a look at the IP security architecture described in RFC 2401, Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol, and the different pieces of that architecture.
IPv4 as originally designed offered no real security features; it was intended simply as an internetworking protocol. While not necessarily a problem for a networking protocol used largely in research and academic settings, the increase in importance of IP networking to the general business and consumer networking environments makes the potential harm resulting from attacks more devastating than ever. This section examines the following.
Issues of security for IP
Security goals defined for...
