New cards and connections appeared overnight

[Iznougoud]

What seems to be three new logical interfaces has occured without my consent, something I've found out via Ipconfig. Obviously this bothers me. The interfaces are named:

1. Teredo tunneling pseudo-interface

2. 6to4 tunneling pesudo-interface

3. Automatic tunneling pseudo-interface

Only no 2 has a gateway given, in hexadecimal - and all have their IPs set in hexadecimal. I may be paranoid, but I do smell something fishy here. Any advice on the subject would be appreciated. Neither AntiSpyware nor AntiVirus is able to find something out of the ordinary.

[PCBruiser]

Hi,

Those are quite normal, and they are just appearing in Windows for versions prior to Win 7.  Windows 7 has them built in.  What all that is, is preparation for IPv6 to replace/augment IPv4, the current Internet standard for addressing.  The IPv4 address space is starting to run low on allocations of IP addresses given the sheer number of additional web connected devices available today, and that will become available in the near future.  IPv4 uses a 32 bit address, while IPv6 uses a 128 bit address.  That means that using IPv6 will increase the IP address space to something like 3.4 x (10^38), a vast increase over IPv4, which allows for approximately 4 billion unique IP addresses.

For more information about IPv6, please see this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

[Iznougoud]

Hi, PCBruiser, and thank you for your answer.

As for IPV6 and such new standards, I follow your your reasoning completely. What's bothering me though, is that these 'connections' appeared overnight. On just one of my machines. With no changes to the configuration. Not made by me, anyway. The other system, also running WinXP and equally updated, shows no trace of these pseudo-interfaces when I run the command "ipconfig".

I'm most likely being paranoid, of course. But I would still like to somehow exclude the possibility of unauthorized tunneled network connections. If for nothing else, for my peace of mind. Could the difference somehow be related to some Microsoft update, in conjuction with the other system being an older socket A-system (Asus A7V600), possibly not capable of handling IPV6, and hence not displaying the same info when I run "ipconfig"?

[PCBruiser]

Hi,

Yes, both are possible.  Personally, I have been using W7 on all my systems for the better part of a year now, and although I do know that the Windows adapter drivers for IPv6 are being rolled out, I do not personally know when each version is being rolled out.  Nor am I sure what network cards will or will not be able to use IPv6.  BTW, the one adaptor that has an IPv6 address in hex, that is the hex IPv6 equivalent of your current IPv4 address.

Now, if you are uncomfortable, and want to make sure that none of this is malware related, post a HJT log in our forum here:  http://spywarehammer.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?board=10.0 and one of our experts will give it a look.  Please be aware that we are very busy in that forum, and it may take a few days before anyone is available to look at your log.

[Iznougoud]

Thank you, PCBruiser. I will look into that option.