Geofeed Adoption and Authentication

TL;DR

This paper examines the adoption of IP Geofeed for geolocation of IP prefixes, evaluates current deployment and security mechanisms, and proposes improvements for authentication and scalability.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of geofeed adoption, assesses RFC adherence, and introduces a novel, more secure authentication approach.

Findings

Geofeed adoption is limited and inconsistent.

RFC 9092's authentication mechanism lacks key security features.

Proposed authentication method improves security and efficiency.

Abstract

IP Geofeed is a recently proposed informational standard that allows network operators to publish the geographical location of deployed IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes. In this work we study the adoption of IP geofeed, assess deployment of geofeed at Regional Internet Registry and Autonomous System levels, and analyze adherence to RFC 8805 and RFC 9092 in deployed geofeeds. We evaluate the authentication mechanism proposed in RFC 9092 and find that it lacks key features from a security perspective. We propose a novel approach to simplify the authentication of geofeeds and assess its efficiency using different benchmarks. Our findings highlight the challenges in current geofeed adoption and the potential for improving both security and scalability in geofeed validation processes.