Lightweight secure router discovery mechanism to overcome DoS attack in IPv6 network

Abstract

Router Discovery (RD) which is the core component of Neighbour Discovery Protocols (NDP) plays key role in the IPv6 address assignment in the IPv6 network. Weakness in the standard Router Discovery protocol leads to several attacks in the IPv6 network. More and more attacks are initiated within network due to the existing vulnerabilities. Even though there are several detection, mitigation and prevention mechanism are already available but these mechanisms itself have issues such as highly complex, high cost and faces several other issues within the design itself. This paper proposed an improved Secure Router Discovery prevention mechanism that is lightweight, integrated and self-regulated that will overcome the issues with the existing prevention techniques. The primary focus of this paper would be discussion on the assumptions, threat model and design goals of the proposed mechanism. It also explains the proposed architecture, components of the building blocks of the architecture and the operation of this lightweight mechanism.