Nominum's new hosted Domain Name System division, Skye has launched a stinging attack on ISPs who run free DNS software.

Jon Shalowitz, Skye general manager told ZDNet that the Freeware legacy DNS was the internet's dirty little secret. Shalowitz said that freeware was a recipe for problems, and it's just going to get worse. Eircom in Ireland was attacked earlier this year because it was using freeware, he claimed.

He added that Freeware is not the same as malware, but was opening up those customers to problems. The majority of the world's top ISPs are migrating away from freeware to a solution that is carrier-grade, commercial-grade and secure, he claimed. Open-source, freeware legacy DNS was weak on security, Shalowitz said. Any secret way of blocking hackers is revealed because the  hacker can look at the code.

Open Sauce means that you can't have secrets, yet with a commercial-grade software product all of that has to be closed off, so things are not visible to the hacker. His proprietary software was written from the ground up, and by having software with source code that is not open for everybody to look at, it is inherently more secure.

Zdnet was a little cynical, so Shalowitz added that the number of vulnerabilities announced and the number of patches that had to made to Bind and freeware products. And Nominum has not had a single known vulnerability in its software.