Internet domain flaw leaves networks exposed

NEWS Three new flaws in the software on which the internet's domain name system relies have been exposed, raising fears that the majority of domain name system (DNS) servers could be open to denial-of-service attacks. Network security firm ISS, which discovered the vulnerabilities, also said one flaw could allow an attacker to run programs on a vulnerable computer. Given the internet attacks levelled at the DNS root servers three weeks ago, new attacks could be around the corner, ISS warned. Dan Ingevaldson, leader for ISS's vulnerability research and development group, said: "A worm could be developed using this thing. We feel this vulnerability is in the same class as the flaw that led to Code Red." The flaws occur in the popular Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) software. Servers running versions of the software up to and including 4.9.10-REL and 8.3.3-REL will have to patch the servers. While BIND 9 is the latest version of the software, many administrators still use BIND 8 and many older systems continue to run BIND 4. ISS's Ingevaldson said that tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of servers connected to the internet are running some version of BIND. The Internet Software Consortium, which manages the open-source BIND software, recommends that administrators upgrade their servers to BIND 9.2.1. Robert Lemos writes for News.com