Afilias Secures Millions of Internet Domains from BIND 9 Vulnerability with DNS Diversity Strategy

DUBLIN--(Business Wire)--
Afilias, a global provider of Internet infrastructure services, today announced
that its DNS network, which supports approximately 10 percent of the Internet`s
domain names, is secure from the recently announced BIND 9 vulnerability that
could cause a denial of service (DoS) attack against DNS name servers. Afilias`
network and customers are protectedby its DNS diversity strategy, which avoids
single points of failure like sole reliance on a single DNS resolution software
such as BIND.

"Afilias has a fundamental security strategy in place across our DNS operations
that integrates diversity at every layer of our infrastructure. Most critical to
this strategy is ensuring diversity in DNS software," said Ram Mohan, Executive
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. "An organization can build bigger
hardware or expand its geographic footprint, but by running a single type DNS
software, whether open source or proprietary, they will always be completely
vulnerable to zero day exploits like the one revealed this week with BIND."

Afilias` DNS network runs both BIND and NSD, two popular, proven and open source
DNS resolution software brands. Running both software products synchronously
ensures that Afilias can simply remove one from production while it is patched
or upgraded, ensuring seamless DNS resolution and 100 percent uptime. The same
cannot be said of systems using a single flavor of software, whether open source
or proprietary.

The BIND security vulnerability announced by ISC on July 28th, enables an
attacker to send a specially crafted Dynamic Update request that can crash a DNS
name server. All organizations running BIND 9 are required to upgrade their
version to 9.4.3-P3, 9.5.1-P3 or 9.6.1-P1. Afilias has already upgraded its
version of BIND.

"Afilias supports large scale domains like .INFO and .ORG as well as our Managed
DNS business, and serves billions of queries daily. Our DNS diversity strategy
ensures that our network was never in jeopardy, and that the 15 million domain
names we are responsible for were always accessible online," add Mohan.

Afilias has also published a new white paper entitled "5 Dimensions of
Diversity: A Winning Strategy for Securing your DNS" which details its
guidelines for how organizations can deploy diversity in their DNS networks to
improve their security and reliability. The white paper can be downloaded at:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/162397/dns-diversity-whitepaper

About BIND

Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is the industry standard software for
domain name resolution services. In active service for over 20 years, BIND has
survived the rapid expansion of the Internet and become more widely deployed
than any other DNS software. As open-source software, unlike proprietary
solutions, its code has been scrutinized, tested and battle-hardened by hundreds
or thousands of programmers over the years.

About Afilias

Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that connect
people to their data. Afilias` reliable, secure, scalable, and globally
available technology supports a wide range of applications including Internet
domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services in the RFID and supply chain
market with its Afilias Discovery Services. For more information on Afilias
please visit www.afilias.info.

Afilias
Heather Read
Cell: +1-732-277-8125
hread@afilias.info
Twitter: @Afilias

Copyright Business Wire 2009