AEAAVT: an Adaptive and Extendible Assurance Assessment and Validation Tool for IPv6 Transition Mechanisms

IPv6 transition mechanisms may cause security problems if configured inappropriately. In this proposal, IAI proposes a comprehensive security management and validation tool, called JANASSURE, to aid the network administrator to effectively manage IPv6 transition mechanisms. JANASSURE adopts probe-based and penetration-based approaches to detect dual-stack nodes and IPv6 tunnels in networks. Experimental results in Phase I show that JANASSURE can correctly detect the existence of IPv6 transition mechanisms in a real enterprise network and networks configured on test-bed. The experiment results also show that JANASSURE can accurately generate the IPv4 topology and IPv6 topology of networks. In Phase II effort, we will extend JANASSURE by applying automated reasoning technologies such as Bayesian Network in security management and validation of JANASSURE, and make JANASSURE a comprehensive security management tool for IPv6 transition mechanisms. The extended JANASSURE will help the network administrator to conduct static risk evaluation, dynamic attack analysis and damage assessment, and plan counter-measures against attacks. Moreover, we will optimize the deployment of probers in JANASSURE to reduce the probe traffic caused by JANASSURE. The developed measurement techniques and algorithms in our work will be integrated into a prototype implementation. BENEFIT: The proposed adaptive and extendible assurance assessment and validation tool for IPv6 transition mechanisms, called JANASSURE, provides a feasible solution to manage IPv6 transition mechanisms. The architecture and implementation approaches can be applied to a broad range of military networks including war-time command and control, real-time surveillance network, homeland security, etc. Other potential commercial applications include border and coast patrol, law enforcement agency, emergency control center and various civil applications. In essence, the ideas, methods and models resulting from this effort will be applicable to virtually all types of networks since all networks are transiting to IPv6. The market is quite large and still developing due to the fact that security is urgently demanded in many applications. The aggregated commercial market size can be much larger than that of military applications. IAI is more than a “think tank”, and we have actively pursued with our partners the application of our technologies into actual products in the past. For this proposed effort, in particular, we strongly believe that our work provides the solution needed in practice. It is also reasonable to expect a source of revenue from service contracts related with the actual deployment and use of JANASSURE. To achieve successful commercialization, IAI will closely work with our partners and collaborator companies such as Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, BAE systems, Raytheon, and Telcordia to transfer this technology into the military and commercial world.