US government has activated 175 million IPv4 addresses

The US government has published, but not sold, 175 million IPv4 addresses in a pilot project in recent months. Thanks to the move, the government says it can prevent unauthorized use and possibly intercept traffic.

The move to register the IPv4 addresses with the Border Gateway Protocol, the routing protocol that regulates traffic between providers, comes from the defense division Defense Digital Service, reports The Washington Post. Publishing is through a company called Global Resource Systems LLC.

The addresses are published via bgp since 20 January. The director of DDS reports that there are two reasons for doing so. First, the defense unit wants to prevent malicious parties from using the IPv4 addresses. It is also possible to possibly intercept traffic from malicious parties via the IP addresses.

The U.S. Department of Defense has owned the addresses for decades, but has done nothing with them until now. It has been assigned some of the IPv4 addresses, because it came from a project of the ministry. The ministry still owns the IP addresses and has no plans to sell them.