Survey of security issues in IPv4 to IPv6 tunnel transition mechanisms

Two reasons why IP version 6 (IPv6) is the future of internet, the amount of potentially allocated IP version 4 (IPv4) addresses is insufficient and IPv4 does not support mobility. Several transition mechanisms were developed to facilitate secure movement from IPv4 to IPv6. The tunnel scheme is the focus of the recent research. However, the tunnel scheme is fraught with security risks. The vulnerabilities of IPv6 protocols demand that attention be paid to security aspects related to the deployment of tunnel transition mechanisms. To address these aspects, this survey presents the vulnerabilities and attacks that threat the tunnel transition mechanisms along with the identification of countermeasures. In particular, this survey analyses and ranks the tunnel mechanisms based on a new security index system to provide significant guidance for deploying tunnel mechanisms. Moreover, the survey provides an overview of the research trends with a special focus on the security trends.