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IPv8 Security

The IPv8 draft separates security into east-west and north-south traffic control.

East-west traffic is traffic between devices inside a network. The draft describes ACL8 zone isolation as the main control. Devices communicate with designated service gateways, and service gateways communicate with designated cloud services.

The draft lists three enforcement layers:

  • NIC firmware ACL8.
  • Zone Server gateway ACL8.
  • Switch port OAuth2 hardware VLAN enforcement.

North-south traffic is traffic from internal devices to the internet. The draft describes two validation steps at Zone Server egress:

  • The outbound connection must have a corresponding DNS8 lookup.
  • The destination ASN must validate against WHOIS8 active route registration.

The draft frames this as a way to block connections to hardcoded IP addresses that bypass DNS.

The draft says BGP8 route advertisements are validated against WHOIS8 before installation. A route that cannot be validated is not installed.

The Security Considerations section covers several prefix protections:

  • ASN prefix spoofing.
  • Internal zone prefix protection.
  • RINE prefix protection.
  • Interior link convention protection.
  • RFC 1918 address privacy.
  • Cross-ASN multicast filtering.
  • /16 minimum prefix enforcement.

Security behavior in this wiki is a summary of the draft. For exact requirements language, read the original text in Original Draft -02.