A Rust based DNS client, server, and Resolver, built to be safe and secure from the ground up.
This repo consists of multiple crates:
| Library | Description |
|---|---|
| Hickory DNS |  Binaries for running a DNS authoritative server. |
| Proto |   Raw DNS library, exposes an unstable API and only for use by the other Hickory DNS libraries, not intended for end-user use. |
| Client |   Used for sending query, update, and notify messages directly to a DNS server. |
| Server |   Use to host DNS records, this also has a hickory-dns binary for running in a daemon form. |
| Resolver |   Utilizes the client library to perform DNS resolution. Can be used in place of the standard OS resolution facilities. |
NOTICE This project was rebranded from Trust-DNS to Hickory DNS and has been moved to the https://github.com/hickory-dns/hickory-dns organization and repo.
- Build a safe and secure DNS server and client with modern features.
- No panics, all code is guarded
- Use only safe Rust, and avoid all panics with proper Error handling
- Use only stable Rust
- Protect against DDOS attacks (to a degree)
- Support options for Global Load Balancing functions
- Make it dead simple to operate
The Hickory DNS Resolver is a native Rust implementation for stub resolution in Rust applications. The Resolver supports many common query patterns, all of which can be configured when creating the Resolver. It is capable of using system configuration on Unix and Windows. On Windows there is a known issue that relates to a large set of interfaces being registered for use, so might require ignoring the system configuration.
The Resolver will properly follow CNAME chains as well as SRV record lookups. There is a long term plan to make the Resolver capable of fully recursive queries, but that's not currently possible.
The Hickory DNS Client is intended to be used for operating against a DNS server directly. It can be used for verifying records or updating records for servers that support SIG0 and dynamic update. The Client is also capable of validating DNSSEC. As of now NSEC3 validation is not yet supported, though NSEC is. There are two interfaces that can be used, the async/await compatible AsyncClient and a blocking Client for ease of use. Today, Tokio is required for the executor Runtime.
These are standards supported by the DNS protocol. The client implements them as high level interfaces, which is a bit more rare.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| SyncDnssecClient | DNSSEC validation |
| create | atomic create of a record, with authenticated request |
| append | verify existence of a record and append to it |
| compare_and_swap | atomic (depends on server) compare and swap |
| delete_by_rdata | delete a specific record |
| delete_rrset | delete an entire record set |
| delete_all | delete all records sets with a given name |
| notify | notify server that it should reload a zone |
The server code is complete, the daemon supports IPv4 and IPv6, UDP and TCP. There currently is no way to limit TCP and AXFR operations, so it is still not recommended to put into production as TCP can be used to DOS the service. Zone file parsing is complete and supported. There is currently no forking option, and the server is not yet threaded (although it is implemented with async IO, so threading may not be a huge benefit). There is still a lot of work to do before a server can be trusted with this externally. Running it behind a firewall on a private network would be safe.
Zone signing support is complete, to insert a key store a pem encoded rsa file
in the same directory as the initial zone file with the .key suffix. Note:
this must be only readable by the current user. If one is not present one will
be created and written to the correct location. This also acts as the initial
key for dynamic update SIG(0) validation. To get the public key, the DNSKEY
record for the zone can be queried. This is needed to provide to other
upstream servers to create the DS key. Dynamic DNS is also complete,
if enabled, a journal file will be stored next to the zone file with the
jrnl suffix. Note: if the key is changed or updated, it is currently the
operators responsibility to remove the only public key from the zone, this
allows for the DNSKEY to exist for some unspecified period of time during
key rotation. Rotating the key currently is not available online and requires
a restart of the server process.
Support of TLS on the Server is managed through a pkcs12 der file. The documentation is captured in the example test config file, example.toml. A registered certificate to the server can be pinned to the Client with the add_ca() method. Alternatively, as the client uses the rust-native-tls library, it should work with certificate signed by any standard CA.
DoT and DoH are supported. This is accomplished through the use of one of native-tls, openssl, or rustls (only rustls is currently supported for DoH). The Resolver requires only requires valid DoT or DoH resolvers being registered in order to be used.
To use with the Client, the TlsClientConnection or HttpsClientConnection should be used. Similarly, to use with the tokio AsyncClient the TlsClientStream or HttpsClientStream should be used. ClientAuth, mTLS, is currently not supported, there are some issues still being worked on. TLS is useful for Server authentication and connection privacy.
To enable DoT one of the features dns-over-native-tls, dns-over-openssl, or dns-over-rustls must be enabled, dns-over-https-rustls is used for DoH.
Currently the root key is hardcoded into the system. This gives validation of DNSKEY and DS records back to the root. NSEC is implemented, but not NSEC3. Because caching is not yet enabled, it has been noticed that some DNS servers appear to rate limit the connections, validating RRSIG records back to the root can require a significant number of additional queries for those records.
Zones will be automatically resigned on any record updates via dynamic DNS. To enable DNSSEC, one of the features dnssec-openssl or dnssec-ring must be enabled.
- RFC 8499: No more master/slave, in honor of Juneteenth
- RFC 1035: Base DNS spec (see the Resolver for caching)
- RFC 2308: Negative Caching of DNS Queries (see the Resolver)
- RFC 2782: Service location
- RFC 3596: IPv6
- RFC 6891: Extension Mechanisms for DNS
- RFC 6761: Special-Use Domain Names (resolver)
- RFC 6762: mDNS Multicast DNS (experimental feature:
mdns) - RFC 6763: DNS-SD Service Discovery (experimental feature:
mdns) - RFC ANAME: Address-specific DNS aliases (
ANAME)
- RFC 3007: Secure Dynamic Update
- RFC 4034: DNSSEC Resource Records
- RFC 4035: Protocol Modifications for DNSSEC
- RFC 4509: SHA-256 in DNSSEC Delegation Signer
- RFC 5702: SHA-2 Algorithms with RSA in DNSKEY and RRSIG for DNSSEC
- RFC 6844: DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) Resource Record
- RFC 6698: The DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol: TLSA
- RFC 6840: Clarifications and Implementation Notes for DNSSEC
- RFC 6844: DNS Certification Authority Authorization Resource Record
- RFC 6944: DNSKEY Algorithm Implementation Status
- RFC 6975: Signaling Cryptographic Algorithm Understanding
- RFC 7858: DNS over TLS (feature:
dns-over-rustls,dns-over-native-tls, ordns-over-openssl) - RFC DoH: DNS over HTTPS, DoH (feature:
dns-over-https-rustls)
- RFC 2317: Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA delegation
- RFC 1995: Incremental Zone Transfer
- RFC 1996: Notify secondaries of update
- Update Leases: Dynamic DNS Update Leases
- Long-Lived Queries: Notify with bells
- RFC 5155: DNSSEC Hashed Authenticated Denial of Existence
- DNSCrypt: Trusted DNS queries
- S/MIME: Domain Names For S/MIME
This assumes that you have Rust stable installed. These presume that the hickory-dns repos have already been synced to the local system:
git clone https://github.com/hickory-dns/hickory-dns.git
cd hickory-dns
- The current minimum rustc version for this project is
1.67 - OpenSSL development libraries (optional in client and resolver, min version 1.0.2)
brew install openssl
export OPENSSL_INCLUDE_DIR=`brew --prefix openssl`/include
export OPENSSL_LIB_DIR=`brew --prefix openssl`/lib
# note for openssl that a minimum version of 1.0.2 is required for TLS,
# if this is an issue, TLS can be disabled (on the client), see below.
$ apt-get install openssl
$ apt-get install libssl-dev pkg-config
Hickory DNS uses just for build workflow management. While running cargo test at the project root will work, this is not exhaustive. Install just with cargo install just.
-
Default tests
These are good for running on local systems. They will create sockets for local tests, but will not attempt to access remote systems. Tests can also be run from the crate directory, i.e.
clientorserverandcargo test
just default-
Default feature tests
Hickory DNS has many features, to quickly test with them or without, there are three targets supported,
default,no-default-features,all-features:
just all-features-
Individual feature tests
Hickory DNS has many features, each individual feature can be tested in dependently, see individual crates for all their features, here is a not necessarily up to date list:
dns-over-rustls,dns-over-https-rustls,dns-over-native-tls,dns-over-openssl,dns-dnssec-openssl,dns-dnssec-openssl,dns-dnssec-ring,mdns. Each feature can be tested with itself as the task target forjust:
just dns-over-https-rustls-
Benchmarks
Waiting on benchmarks to stabilize in mainline Rust.
- Production build, from the
hickory-dnsbase dir, to get all features, just pass the--all-featuresflag.
cargo build --release -p hickory-dnsWarning: Hickory DNS is still under development, running in production is not recommended. The server is currently only single-threaded, it is non-blocking so this should allow it to work with most internal loads.
- Verify the version
./target/release/hickory-dns --version- Get help
./target/release/hickory-dns --help- Launch
hickory-dnsserver with test config
You may want not passing the -p parameter will run on default DNS ports. For the tls features, there are also port options for those, see hickory-dns --help
./target/release/hickory-dns -c ./tests/test-data/test_configs/example.toml -z ./tests/test-data/test_configs/ -p 24141- Query the just launched server with
dig
dig @127.0.0.1 -p 24141 www.example.comAvailable in 0.20
cargo install --bin resolve hickory-utilOr from source, in the hickory-dns directory
cargo install --bin resolve --path utilexample:
$ resolve www.example.com.
Querying for www.example.com. A from udp:8.8.8.8:53, tcp:8.8.8.8:53, udp:8.8.4.4:53, tcp:8.8.4.4:53, udp:[2001:4860:4860::8888]:53, tcp:[2001:4860:4860::8888]:53, udp:[2001:4860:4860::8844]:53, tcp:[2001:4860:4860::8844]:53
Success for query name: www.example.com. type: A class: IN
www.example.com. 21063 IN A 93.184.216.34The Client has a few features which can be disabled for different reasons when embedding in other software.
-
dnssec-opensslIt is a default feature, so default-features will need to be set to false (this will disable all other default features in hickory-dns). Until there are other crypto libraries supported, this will also disable DNSSEC validation. The functions will still exist, but will always return errors on validation. The below example line will disable all default features and enable OpenSSL, remove"openssl"to remove the dependency on OpenSSL. -
dnssec-ringRing support can be used for RSA and ED25519 DNSSEC validation. -
dns-over-native-tlsUsesnative-tlsfor DNS-over-TLS implementation, only supported in client and resolver, not server. -
dns-over-opensslUsesopensslfor DNS-over-TLS implementation supported in server and client, resolver does not have default CA chains. -
dns-over-rustlsUsesrustlsfor DNS-over-TLS implementation, only supported in client and resolver, not server. This is the best option where a pure Rust toolchain is desired. Supported in client, resolver, and server. -
dns-over-https-rustlsUsesrustlsfor DNS-over-HTTPS (and DNS-over-TLS will be enabled) implementation, only supported in client, resolver, and server. This is the best option where a pure Rust toolchain is desired. -
mdnsEXPERIMENTAL Enables the experimental mDNS features as well as DNS-SD. This currently has known issues.
Using custom features in dependencies:
[dependencies]
...
hickory-dns = { version = "*", default-features = false, features = ["dnssec-openssl"] }
Using custom features during build:
$> cargo build --release --features dns-over-rustls
...-
Why are you building another DNS server?
Because of all the security advisories out there for BIND.Using Rust semantics it should be possible to develop a high performance and safe DNS Server that is more resilient to attacks.
-
What is the MSRV (minimum stable Rust version) policy?
Hickory DNS will work to support backward compatibility with three Rust versions.For example, if
1.50is the current release, then the MSRV will be1.47. The version is only increased as necessary, so it's possible that the MSRV is older than this policy states. Additionally, the MSRV is only supported for theno-default-featuresbuild due to it being an intractable issue of trying to enforce this policy on dependencies.
For live discussions beyond this repository, please see this Discord.
Licensed under either of
- Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
- MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.
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