Cryptographically Generated Address
method for binding a public signature key to an IPv6 address
A Cryptographically Generated Address (CGA) is an Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) address that has a host identifier computed from a cryptographic hash function. This procedure is a method for binding a public signature key to an IPv6 address in the Secure Neighbor Discovery Protocol (SEND).
Characteristics
A Cryptographically Generated Address is an IPv6 address whose interface identifier has been generated according to the CGA generation method. The interface identifier is formed by the least-significant 64 bits of an IPv6 address and is used to identify the host's network interface on its subnet. The subnet is determined by the most-significant 64 bits, the subnet prefix.
Apart from the public key that is to be bound to the CGA, the CGA generation method takes several other input parameters including the predefined subnet prefix. These parameters, along with other parameters that are generated during the execution of the CGA generation method, form a set of parameters called the CGA Parameters data structure. The complete set of CGA Parameters has to be known in order to be able to verify the corresponding CGA.
The CGA Parameters data structure consists of:
modifier: a random 128-bit unsigned integer;
subnetPrefix: the 64-bit prefix that defines to which subnet the CGA belongs;
collCount: an 8-bit unsigned integer that must be 0, 1, or 2;
publicKey: the public key as a DER-encoded ASN.1 structure of the type SubjectPublicKeyInfo;
extFields: an optional variable-length field (default length 0).
Additionally, a security parameter Sec determines the CGA's strength against brute-force attacks. This is a 3-bit unsigned integer that can have any value from 0 up to (and including) 7 and is encoded in the three leftmost bits of the CGA's interface identifier.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cryptographically Generated Address” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.