Unveiling IPv6 Scanning Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study Using Large Scale Proactive and Passive IPv6 Telescopes

Hammas Bin Tanveer; Wai Sun Chan; Ricky K. P. Mok; Sebastian Kappes; Philipp Richter; Oliver Gasser; John Ronan; Arthur Berger; kc Claffy

arXiv · 2508.07506

Unveiling IPv6 Scanning Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study Using Large Scale Proactive and Passive IPv6 Telescopes

Hammas Bin Tanveer·Wai Sun Chan·Ricky K. P. Mok·Sebastian Kappes·Philipp Richter·Oliver Gasser·John Ronan·Arthur Berger·kc Claffy

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Abstract

We introduce new tools and vantage points to develop and integrate proactive techniques to attract IPv6 scan traffic, thus enabling its analysis. By deploying the largest-ever IPv6 proactive telescope in a production ISP network, we collected over 600M packets of unsolicited traffic from 1.9k Autonomous Systems in 10 months. We characterized the sources of unsolicited traffic, evaluated the effectiveness of five major features across the network stack, and inferred scanners' sources of target addresses and their strategies.

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Hammas Bin Tanveer, Wai Sun Chan, Ricky K. P. Mok, Sebastian Kappes, Philipp Richter, Oliver Gasser, John Ronan, Arthur Berger, kc Claffy. 2025-08-10. Unveiling IPv6 Scanning Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study Using Large Scale Proactive and Passive IPv6 Telescopes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07506

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