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.