Your WiFi network is not secured

After the previous articles you should be convinced that router vulnerabilities are one of the major concerns in network security. As you already know, the new Avast 2015 version includes a security feature called Home Network Security (HNS) which scans your network and router for vulnerabilities and prevent threats.

One serious problem occurs when when IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is enabled (both by the ISP and on the router), but there is no IPv6 firewall being used. Which means that anyone on the Internet can access devices on the network (like printers, network disks, etc.). This is often the case because the routers are small, embedded devices that cannot handle IPv6 firewalling.

The main advantage of IPv6 over IPv4 is its larger address space: it allows 2¹²⁸ or approximately 3.4×10³⁸ addresses (or sites) which is an enormous number! In addition to offering more addresses, IPv6 also implements features not present in IPv4: it simplifies address assignment, network renumbering and packets processing.

In fact, a proper IPv6 firewall requires quite some processing power and RAM, so it’s no wonder that many of the cheap routers don’t have that functionality at all (or it’s not working properly).

The remediation is relatively simple: Just disable IPv6 on the router. In most cases, this shouldn’t have any impact on other services, unless they require IPv6 (in which case, it would be good to replace the router with something better which is IPv6 certified).

Avast Internet Security and Premium products offer full support to IPv6 for your computer on our silent firewall. Take into account that other devices, like network drives connected to the router won’t be protected.

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