A recent announcement by Chinese government has raised great concern among the cybersecurity community. Chinese authorities say it has become a world leader in upgrading its wired infrastructure for the transition to IPv6 technology, which many experts believe could facilitate the deployment of attacks sponsored by the government of the Asian giant.
Reports from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology indicate that China is the country with the most addresses applied for IPv6 in the world. As some users will recall, these online communication protocols are used to identify and locate devices and networks, as well as route traffic over the Internet, with IPv6 being the latest iteration of this technology.
From anonymity, a cybersecurity analyst assures that this will increase excessively the cyberattacks registered outside China: “The blocking of IP addresses linked to malicious activity is one of the main security methods; IPv6 would allow Chinese-sponsored threat actors to easily change their IP addresses,” he told the Washington Times.
Although this technology is still in development, it is a matter of time before PVv6 completely replaces IPv4, the current implementation of communication protocol on the Internet: “Developers continue to find vulnerabilities that any group of threat actors, something that the Chinese government will not last to use,” says the researcher.
In addition, the researcher assures that the new IPv6 infrastructure will boost surveillance systems against Chinese citizens, so systematic monitoring of anyone, especially minorities, will be much easier for the authorities.
To date, China is still regarded as one of the countries with the most complex surveillance systems in the world, capable of conducting domestic espionage in near real-time. Other countries in the world have not hesitated to express their concern about this practice, considered as a severe violation of the human rights of citizens.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that since the beginning of the administration of Donald Trump the political tensions between China and the United States reached an unsuspected level, with the president taking drastic measures such as the expulsion of some technology companies from American territory and other allied countries.
To learn more about information security risks, malware variants, vulnerabilities and information technologies, feel free to access the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) websites.
He is a well-known expert in mobile security and malware analysis. He studied Computer Science at NYU and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2003. He is actively working as an anti-malware expert. He also worked for security companies like Kaspersky Lab. His everyday job includes researching about new malware and cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in mobile security and mobile vulnerabilities.
