“This increasing sophistication … continues to worry network operators,” McPherson said. With the consolidation of content sources and migration to the cloud, “the risk of attacks that impact multiple entities and more commonly induce collateral damage is heightened.”
Most providers said they were worried about the slow rate of IPv4 to IPv6 migration and complained of missing IPv6 security features in routers, firewalls and other critical network infrastructure.
Their concerns were reflected by a warning from the Number Resource Organization (NRO) that less than 10% of available IPv4 addresses remain unallocated.
“This small pool of existing IP addresses marks a critical moment in IPv4 address exhaustion, ultimately impacting the future network operations of all businesses and organizations around the globe,” the NRO said in a statement.
The NRO represents the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that oversee the allocation of internet number resources.