Congrats are in order today for OpenDNS engineer and security researcher Matthew Dempsky. Though he uncovered a vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player way, way back on Sept. 22, 2008, Adobe has this week acknowledged the bug and committed to fixing it. Much of the attention given to the bug recently was because Adobe had claimed they don’t ship any known crash bugs in Flash and Matthew proved them wrong with his proof-of-concept site: http://flashcrash.dempsky.org/ (This will almost certainly kill any browser not released in the last few months).

This isn’t the first major vulnerability Matthew’s found. Back in February, he uncovered a vulnerability in djbdns and even wrote a patch. Needless to say, OpenDNS is lucky to have him.

Want to work with skilled people like Matthew? We’re hiring in all departments.

A short update — Last week we served a record 22 billion queries in a single day. We also served over 145 billion queries across the entire week, another record for us. We’re growing like a weed and with an average of nearly 250,000 queries per second we’re investing in our infrastructure in 2010 and are adding more capacity all the time. And for those who don’t know, 250,000 queries per second makes us one of the largest DNS providers in the world, much larger than most ISP’s DNS installations. The fact that we’ve done all of this without downtime is an even greater testament to our engineering and operations teams.

We have a some great new features we’re excited to share with you over the next couple months that will apply to all users of our service, free and paid.

Last, but certainly not least, we’re hiring. And we have even more positions to post on our careers page in the coming weeks, particularly as we look to grow our engineering team.

Over the years, OpenDNS engineers have spoken far and wide about the virtues of our DNS infrastructure and our customers have enjoyed the many features we provide on top of the DNS. We’d like to connect the dots.

We’ll give an overview of the OpenDNS architecture that allows us to answer more than 21 billion DNS queries each day with zero downtime.  We’ll show where each of our features fit into this architecture and why the DNS is the best medium for providing content filtering, typo correction, stats, SmartCache, and more.

David Ulevitch, our founder and a seasoned network engineer will be covering much of the network and DNS infrastructure.  I am an engineer at OpenDNS and designed the stats system.  I’ll be talking about many of our features and how they use the DNS to their advantage.

This webinar will be more technical than usual.  It starts February 4^th at 10:00 AM Pacific time and lasts just 30 minutes.  Register now and don’t forget to tell your friends!

It’s a new year, a fresh start, and the perfect time to take a look at all of the functionality your OpenDNS account offers.

Many of you use OpenDNS primarily for faster, more reliable DNS resolution. DNS is the foundation, the core of our service and we take great pride in the fact that OpenDNS is the safest, fastest, smartest and most reliable recursive DNS service in the world — and also the choice of more than 15 million users. But today I encourage you to take a look at the other features in your OpenDNS account that you might not be using yet.

• First off, check out our Web Content Filtering. We provide award-winning filtering with more than 50 content categories, manageable entirely through your Dashboard. It can be as simple as choosing the level of filtering you want (high, moderate, low or minimal) or as powerful as selecting individual sites you want blocked.
• Next, enable Stats and Logs. OpenDNS is the only way to see at a domain level what’s actually happening on your network. We show you things like the most popular sites visited from your network, and also alert you when we see Internet-scale malware. OpenDNS Stats let you spot trends before they become problems, and you can manually purge your data at any time.
• Also, Customize with an image and messages on the Guide and block pages. We let you swap out the OpenDNS logo on the Guide with your own logo or photo, and let you customize the text there and on the page your users see when they try to get to a site that’s been blocked.
• Last, peruse our Advanced Settings. Here you’ll find features like SmartCache, which makes Web sites that are down for the rest of the Internet load for you, and Basic Malware/Botnet protection, which will keep your network safe from certain types of malware and viruses, like Conficker.

These are all features provided in our Basic, free version, and OpenDNS Deluxe and Enterprise offer lots more. From more robust Web content filtering and enterprise-class Malware protection, to reporting and more comprehensive Stats, to an Audit Log and Delegated Administration, and the ability to turn off advertisements on the Guide, OpenDNS subscription services are worth a look. Particularly if you manage the network for a school, small business or enterprise and are currently using a filtering appliance, I also encourage you to talk to our sales team about how much money we can save you, and how much more ease and functionality, we can provide you.

Happy New Year everyone!

I love this time of year. People are cheerful and kind, offering to help each other however they can.

One of the easiest ways to help others? We’ve reminded you before, but while you’re home for the holidays this year, do your loved ones a favor and set up OpenDNS on their computer or router. (We recommend the router if possible. But don’t forget to download the updater client on their machine to make sure their IP stays updated if dynamic.)

The simple, two-minute change will not only make their Internet better performing - faster and more reliable - but it will also keep them safe online. OpenDNS’s on-by-default phishing protection will keep them safe from fraudulent sites and take the guesswork out of identifying them. If they have little kids around, ask if they want Parental Controls on, too. And add a custom image - a family photo, perhaps? - and custom message for the Guide and block pages for extra personalization.

Happy holidays to everyone. Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy holiday season.