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    Confused about DNS forwarding and local domains

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved DHCP and DNS
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    • johnpozJ Offline
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
      last edited by

      You understand that host overrides can just be done in the gui right...

      And why are you forwarding - why not just resolve... I fail to understand the fascination of users to hand over all their dns queries to a specific company... But then scream my dns is leaking... Yeah your freaking leaking everything you do to company X ;) hehehehe on purpose!!

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
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      J B 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • J Offline
        Jeremy11one @johnpoz
        last edited by

        @johnpoz said in Confused about DNS forwarding and local domains:

        And why are you forwarding - why not just resolve... I fail to understand the fascination of users to hand over all their dns queries to a specific company...

        It's a neat situation of pros and cons. If we resolve, it's done in plaintext so ISP and bad guys can see the queries. If we forward, it hands all our lookups to a 3rd party, but at least those are encrypted and we can choose which 3rd party to trust. So neither option can provide all the benefits. I'd say either option is reasonable depending on the situation.

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        • johnpozJ Offline
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
          last edited by

          Yeah - my dns resolving is too fast... Let me slow it up!!! and put in a tcp tunnel... Cuz you know that ISP I pay for internet, and handles all my traffic and sees every IP I go too... Sure and the F wouldn't want them know I did a query for google.com..

          If your concerned with your isp spying on you - then tunnel all your traffic through them... Forwarding dns to some specific company is not solving anything other than slowing up your dns and handing them everything you do on a silver freaking platter.

          But sure have fun with that!

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 25.07.1 | Lab VMs 2.8.1, 25.07.1

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          • B Offline
            bb77 @johnpoz
            last edited by bb77

            @johnpoz:

            when I first tried to set this up it didn't work as expected with the host-overrides in the GUI. But it's quiet possible that other things were wrong configured at that time ;-)

            I send my DNS lookups to https://dns.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/ via DOT. I did not mention this before for the sake of simplicity. Sure you have to trust that they keep word with their Privacy Notice. But I trust them way more than I trust my ISP or any other commercial companies like Google, Cloudflare, Quad9 etc...

            ahking19A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ahking19A Offline
              ahking19 @bb77
              last edited by

              @foofighter77
              "any other commercial companies like Google, Cloudflare, Quad9 etc..."

              If you are resolving these companies are not part of the equation. You are directly querying the root servers.

              If you don't trust your ISP using DOT doesn't completely solve your problem due to SNI. Server Name Indication (SNI) exposes the hostname the client is connecting to when establishing a TLS connection. So unless you have encrypted SNI or tunnel all your traffic thru your ISP you don't have privacy.

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              • B Offline
                bb77 @ahking19
                last edited by

                @ahking19 You're right I mixed things up a bit. Google, Cloudlare etc. are not relevant in this case. Except you explicitly use them as your DNS Provider. What they literally do in every other YouTube Tutorial ;-)

                Total privacy an is not my goal here. And like you said there are always pros and cons in every situation. For me the most important thing is to keep the internet as decentralized as possible and as private as possible, and DoT with a thrust worthy DNS-provider seems like a reasonable compromise to me. For sure better than browsers with DoH via Cloudflare or Google enabled by default. ;-)

                But thanks anyway for your correction and your addition about SNI. I was not fully aware about that little detail :-)

                ahking19A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • ahking19A Offline
                  ahking19 @bb77
                  last edited by

                  @foofighter77
                  Encrypted SNI is still being drafted but hopefully we will have it soon in all web browsers, although you can use it in Firefox - https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/10/18/encrypted-sni-comes-to-firefox-nightly/

                  Good article from Cloudflare on Encrypted SNI if you are interested - https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-sni/

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                  • B Offline
                    bb77 @ahking19
                    last edited by bb77

                    @ahking19 Thank you. Sounds interesting, especially the Encrypted SNI together with DOT. The Problem with DoH is, that it uses Port 443. And obviously you cannot block Port 443 at Firewall level. Therfore any device or software with hardcoded DNS over HTTPS settings can bypass your DNS Resolver/Forwarder.

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                    • M Offline
                      Moogle Stiltzkin @johnpoz
                      last edited by

                      @johnpoz

                      not sure about the other user, but one use case was getting the green lock sign for https so you stop getting nagged that your https cert is invalid

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcVx-k-02E

                      so instead you do what wolfgang proposes, using the dns for local only, for the purpose of getting a valid working https cert using letsencrypt to work for a local only environment.

                      it also solves the issue of using digit lan ips and port numbers, and switch to some simple standard url but for local use.

                      and to make things cleaner, use a proxy manager like nginx proxy manager so you can reduce the usage of ports in the url.

                      not sure the security implications of this, but this is what wolfgang and technotim in their youtube said to do for local users running their own self hosting services to access their app web services locally.

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                      • keyserK Offline
                        keyser Rebel Alliance @Jeremy11one
                        last edited by

                        @Jeremy11one said in Confused about DNS forwarding and local domains:

                        Here's a 2018 Microsoft page I found with contrary advice: link. I'm interested in your opinion to see if there's something that article hasn't taken into consideration.

                        While generally @johnpoz does have a point on the issues with leaky DNS when using public domains internally, it should be noted it only happens if mistakes are made in internal DNS setup (like fx. Transparent vs. Static, and searchdomains and such).

                        There are a lot of arguments for using a public internal domain when it comes to user transparency/understanding and just generally making lives easier because of “easy use” of short hostnames instead of FQDN. Also, I highly disagree with the argument that a private domain internally makes things easier - it does not in the majority of management cases with large userbases. It will create a lot of double maintenance in DNS, proxies and firewall setups (reflection) if your userbase generally are using webbased tools in their interaction with company ressources that are a mix of internally and externally hosted servers. Much easier to maintain with a public internal domain, and no need for NAT reflection which is a PITA.

                        So both solutions works and each have their advantages. It’s safe to assume MS made that recommendation from years of support and understanding what problems was caused by each model.
                        Yes, a private domain is the “correct” technical solution, but ease of use and maintenance has a tendency to win ;-)
                        It should be noted as we increasingly move towards SAAS in cloudservices, the public internal domain advantage in maintenance does “diminish” as those require you to make double maintenance in DNS if they are named in the public domain.

                        Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

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