Block Malicious DNS Queries

In this guide we'll walk through how to configure custom DNS resolvers in your Firezone account to block malicious or unwanted DNS queries.

This is commonly used by organizations to improve Internet security across their workforce. Blocking malicious DNS queries can prevent malware from communicating with command and control servers and reduce the risk of phishing attacks.

Prerequisites

• A Firezone account. Sign up here if you don't have one already.
• Firezone Client installed on the devices you want to protect. The Firezone Client must be installed and signed in for this configuration to take effect. See our installation guides for each platform here.

Step 1: Choose a resolver to use

You'll first need one more DNS resolvers to use. See the table below for examples of some popular providers that offer malware-blocking and privacy-focused DNS resolvers for public use:

Step 2: Add the resolver in Firezone

1. Sign in to your Firezone account and navigate to Settings -> DNS tab.
2. Add each of the IP addresses of the DNS resolvers you want to use in the Client DNS section.
3. Click Save to apply the changes. The Firezone Clients will automatically update their configuration to use the new DNS resolvers.

Step 3: Verify

You can verify that DNS is being filtered by querying a known malicious domain from a device with the Firezone Client signed in and checking if you receive an answer of 0.0.0.0 or NXDOMAIN.

For example, the zeustracker.abuse.ch domain is associated with the Zeus botnet and is commonly blocked by many DNS providers:

> dig zeustracker.abuse.ch

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> @1.1.1.1 zeustracker.abuse.ch
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 63245
;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;zeustracker.abuse.ch.		IN	A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
abuse.ch.		300	IN	SOA	ns-cloud-d1.googledomains.com. cloud-dns-hostmaster.google.com. 2 21600 3600 259200 300

;; Query time: 256 msec
;; SERVER: 100.100.111.1#53(100.100.111.1)
;; WHEN: Thu Apr 18 08:05:28 PDT 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 142

If you're using one of the Cloudflare filtering resolvers mentioned above, you can test with malware.testcategory.com which Cloudflare provides to check if DNS filtering is working correctly:

> dig malware.testcategory.com

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> @1.1.1.2 malware.testcategory.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 57424
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
; OPT=15: 00 10 ("..")
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;malware.testcategory.com.	IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
malware.testcategory.com. 60	IN	A	0.0.0.0

;; Query time: 52 msec
;; SERVER: 100.100.111.1#53(100.100.111.1)
;; WHEN: Thu Apr 18 08:02:34 PDT 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 75