6. Security Considerations

Stateless address autoconfiguration allows a host to connect to a network, configure an address, and start communicating with other nodes without ever registering or authenticating itself with the local site. Although this allows unauthorized users to connect to and use a network, the threat is inherently present in the Internet architecture. Any node with a physical attachment to a network can generate an address (using a variety of ad hoc techniques) that provides connectivity.

The use of stateless address autoconfiguration and Duplicate Address Detection opens up the possibility of several denial-of-service attacks. For example, any node can respond to Neighbor Solicitations for a tentative address, causing the other node to reject the address as a duplicate. A separate document [RFC3756] discusses details about these attacks, which can be addressed with the Secure Neighbor Discovery protocol [RFC3971]. It should also be noted that [RFC3756] points out that the use of IP security is not always feasible depending on network environments.

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