following up on my previous post:

it turns out that, like anything else weird in infrastructure, it was DNS

I registered mydomain.com as my primary router’s domain, re-ran the experiment with a fresh 128 char subdomain, and I received zero scans on the new domain.

Now my question is, who’s making that one query that leaks my domain name? Is it Apache on startup?

One solution is to resolve all my subdomains on /etc/hosts so it never has to leave the box, but I’m curious what a more experienced net admin would suggest.

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    41·
    15 hours ago

    The full-blown solution would be to have your own recursive DNS server on your local network, and to block or redirect any other DNS server to your own, and possibly blocking all know DoH servers.

    This would solve the DNS leakage issue, since your recursive server would learn the authoritative NS for your domain, and so would contact that NS directly when processing any queries for any of your subdomains. This cuts out the possibility of any espionage by your ISP/Google/Quad9’s DNS servers, because they’re now uninvolved. That said, your ISP could still spy in the raw traffic to the authoritative NS, but from your experiment, they don’t seem to be doing that.

    Is a recursive DNS server at home a tad extreme? I used to think so, but we now have people running Pi-hole and similar software, which can run in recursive mode (being built atop Unbound, the DNS server software).

    /<minor nitpick>

    “It was DNS” typically means that name resolution failed or did not propagate per its specification. Whereas I’m of the opinion that if DNS is working as expected, then it’s hard to pin the blame on DNS. For example, forgetting to renew a domain is not a DNS problem. And setting a bad TTL or a bad record is not a DNS problem (but may be a problem with your DNS software). And so too do I think that DNS leakage is not a DNS problem, because the protocol itself is functioning as documented.

    It’s just that the operators of the upstream servers see dollar-signs by selling their user’s data. Not DNS, but rather a capitalism problem, IMO.

    /</minor nitpick>