Cisco Umbrella now supports DoH
Not all DNS services are created equally. Some break. Some fail to connect to domain servers. Speeds can vary, and if not kept up-to-date, some DNS services can affect the ability to work efficiently. But with more than a decade of leadership in recursive DNS services (13+ years and counting!) Cisco Umbrella boasts significant advantages when it comes to understanding how both legitimate and non-legitimate parties register domains, provision infrastructure, and route internet traffic.
Back in the old days when we were known as OpenDNS, we started with the mission to deliver the most reliable, safest, smartest, and fastest DNS resolution in the world. It was a pretty tall order, but we did it — and we’re still doing it today under our new name, Cisco Umbrella. (Here’s one for the trivia champions: OpenDNS was acquired by Cisco on August 27, 2015.)
In fact, TechRadar Pro recognized us as having the best free and public DNS server for 2020. You don’t have to take our word for it — check it out here. But just because we’re the best doesn’t mean we’ll stop innovating.
We recently announced support for DNS over HTTPS, commonly referred to as DoH, a standard published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Cisco Umbrella offers DNS resolution over an HTTPS endpoint as part of our home and enterprise customer DNS services. Users may now choose to use the DoH endpoint instead of sending DNS queries over plaintext for increased security and privacy. DoH can increase user privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS data by man-in-the-middle attacks. In addition, when DoH is enabled, it ensures that your ISP can’t collect personal information related to your browsing history. It can often improve performance, too.
How does it work?
DoH works just like a normal DNS request, except that it uses Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to transmit and receive queries. Both requests take a domain name that a user types into their browser and send a query to a DNS server to learn the numerical IP address of the web server hosting that site. The key difference is that DoH takes the DNS query and sends it to a DoH-compatible DNS server (resolver) via an encrypted HTTPS connection on port 443, rather than plaintext on port 53. DoH prevents third-party observers from sniffing traffic and understanding what DNS queries users have run or what websites users are intending to access. Since the DoH (DNS) request is encrypted, it’s even invisible to cybersecurity software that relies on passive DNS monitoring to block requests to known malicious domains.
DoH is a choice, not a requirement
So what’s all the fuss about DoH? It all comes down to user privacy. And since privacy is a hot topic, it will continue to be blogged and chatted about wildly. To block or not to block DoH is a personal choice. Mozilla blazed the trail with the Firefox browser, but other vendors like Microsoft and Google recently announced plans to add support for DoH in future releases of Windows and Chrome. Mozilla started enabling DoH by default in version 69 of Firefox, and started rolling it out gradually in September 2019. Cisco Umbrella supports Mozilla’s ‘use-application-dns.net‘ canary domain, meaning that Firefox will disable DoH for users of Cisco Umbrella.
Because DoH is configured within the application, the DNS servers configured by the operating system are not used. This means that the protection provided by Cisco Umbrella may be bypassed by applications using DoH. But don’t worry… you can block this feature easily with Umbrella, too. Most of our enterprise customers choose not to utilize DoH. It isn’t right for everyone.
Protect your Umbrella settings
Our team at Cisco Umbrella recommends that companies use enterprise policies to manage DoH on endpoints they control. For detailed help on how to proceed, check out this helpful article, GPO and DoH.
To block DoH providers and keep your Umbrella deployment settings follow these simple steps:
1. Navigate to Policies > Content Categories
2. Select your in use category setting.
3. Ensure that “Proxy/Anonymizer” is selected
4. Save.
Your users will now remain covered by Umbrella as Firefox gradually rolls out this change to their users.
How to disable DoH in Firefox
Firefox allows users (via settings) and organizations (via enterprise policies and a canary domain lookup) to disable DoH when it interferes with a preferred policy. For existing Firefox users that are based in the United States, the notification below will display if and when DoH is first enabled, allowing the user to choose not to use DoH and instead continue using their default OS DNS resolver.
Reliable, effective protection with Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella is the leading provider of network security and DNS services, enabling the world to connect to the internet with confidence on any device. When connecting directly to the internet, organizations need security that is incredibly reliable and eliminates performance problems for end users. Umbrella is built upon a global cloud infrastructure that has delivered 100% uptime since 2006 and we provide automated failover for simplified deployment and management. By leveraging our extensive peering relationships with the top internet service providers (ISPs), content delivery networks (CDNs), and SaaS platforms, such as O365, Umbrella optimizes the routes between core networks and our cloud hubs, providing superior performance and user satisfaction.
Umbrella’s support for DoH is just another demonstration of our commitment to delivering the best, most reliable, and fastest internet experience to more than 100 million enterprise and consumer users (and counting).
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