Apr 26, 2021 14:00:00

Suddenly, 175 million IPv4 addresses were screaming for depletion, and what happened?

On January 20, 2021, minutes before Joe Biden took office as the 46th President of the United States, 56 million IPv4 addresses suddenly appeared on the Internet's global routing table. The sudden appearance of a large number

of IPv4 addresses that should have been exhausted in multiple regions has attracted a great deal of attention.

The Florida mystery of dormant Pentagon IP addresses --The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/24/pentagon-internet-address-mystery/

The Mystery of AS8003 | Kentik
https://www.kentik.com/blog/the-mystery-of-as8003/

This confusion was caused by a company called Global Resource Systems based in Florida, USA. When Joe Biden took office, the company announced 56 million IPv4 addresses owned by the Pentagon and managed by Global Resource Systems. GlobalResource Systems has continued to increase the number of IPv4 addresses it manages on a regular basis, and at the time of writing the article, it has grown to 175 million. That's about 6% of all IPv4 addresses in the world, and is estimated to be worth billions of dollars.

The IPv4 address published by GlobalResource Systems is assigned an AS number of 'AS8003'.

The graph below shows the network operators arranged in descending order of the number of IPv4 addresses owned. Normally, telecommunications giants such as AT & T and Verizon are listed, but it can be seen that GRS-DoD (Global Resource Systems) has far more IPV4 addresses than those.

The Pentagon-owned IPv4 address was published quietly over BGP by GlobalResource Systems. These IPv4 addresses have been dormant for a long time, but they have been told to network administrators that they are ready to accept traffic. Due to the sudden release of a large number of IPv4 addresses, the Washington Post reports that 'this announcement is the most dramatic change in IP address space since the introduction of BGP in the 1980s.'

'Global Resource Systems has announced more IP address space than ever before in the history of the Internet,' said Doug Madley, director of analytics for network monitoring firm kentik.

It's unclear why GlobalResource Systems released so many IP addresses, and because the announcement was just before Mr. Biden's inauguration, he said, 'When Mr. Trump resigned, he sold off some of the Pentagon's IP addresses. Isn't it? '

However, the dormant announcement of IPv4 addresses has been revealed to be due to the Pentagon's procurement department, DDS. Founded in 2015, DDS plays a role like a Silicon Valley company within the Pentagon, developing biometric apps and solutions for encrypting information about the new corona virus vaccine. I am.

The DDS director, Brett Goldstein, has revealed that he has conducted a pilot campaign to promote the Pentagon's IP address space. 'This pilot activity is to evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of the Pentagon's IP address space. In addition, the pilot activity may lead to the identification of potential vulnerabilities. There is. '

However, the details of this effort are unknown, and the Pentagon has refused to answer questions about the project. Goldstein also didn't reveal why an unnamed Florida company, rather than the Pentagon or DDS, announced the IPv4 address.

'The only thing that is clear is the fact that the announcement by GlobalResource Systems has directed Internet traffic fire hoses to the Pentagon-owned IP address space,' the Washington Post reports.