A vulnerability discovered in some of Juniper Networks’ routing software highlights that the next-generation Internet, known as Internet Protocol version 6, still has a ways to go before it will be ready for widespread adoption.
The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team and Secunia, a security advisory company, issued alerts Wednesday for Juniper M-series and T-series routers built between Feb. 24 and June 20 that are running IPv6. IPv6 is a new version of the Internet Protocol that expands the pool of unique addresses available for connecting PCs and other devices in the Internet. The vulnerability is caused by what is called a “memory leak,” which an attacker could exploit to cause a denial-of-service attack. These memory leaks occur when IPv6 packets are sent in such an order that they take up more memory than usual. As the memory is filled up, the router runs slower. And eventually when the memory is exhausted, the router crashes and reboots itself, potentially causing major service outages or significantly slowed network performance.
Source: CNet
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