Support DNS over HTTPS

[lidel]

• Version: v0.36.4
• Platform: Node and Browser
• Subsystem: DNS

Type: Feature

Severity: Low

Problem

When running in Node, js-ipfs uses system resolver (/etc/resolv.conf)

When run in web browser context, we don't have access to UDP sockets, so since https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/pull/1172 js-ipfs running on webpages delegates DNS queries to https://ipfs.io/api/v0/dns?arg=${domain}.

Solution

• Make it possible for user to set arbitrary DNS resolvers (plural)
  • jsipfs config DNS.HttpsResolvers ["https://mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query"]
  • initial implementation should pick one at random, future ones can be smarter and temporarily blacklist resolvers that are known to be down
• Default behavior
  • Node: we may still use system resolver in Node, but should always switch to DoH if user provided one in config
  • Browser: To remove dependency on our gateway js-ipfs should use well-known public DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in Browser by default, and stop hitting https://ipfs.io/api/v0/dns which is a single point of failure

RFC8484: Notes on binary format and

@hugomrdias's recent work on IPNS over DNS confirmed we are able to use binary DNS over HTTPS in web browser context, which makes it possible to use any DNS over HTTPS (DoH) server compatible with RFC8484

I repeat: we should not need to use proprietary JSON format supported by Google and Cloudflare, but rely on native DNS query sent as HTTP GET encoded in Base64, as specified in example in RFC8484. This enables users to have better choice of DNS servers with DoH support: any server will do, as long it implements RFC8484.

References

• DNS Queries over HTTPS (DoH): https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484
• A cartoon intro to DNS over HTTPS: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/a-cartoon-intro-to-dns-over-https/
• DNS-over-HTTPS in Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver
  • Test endpoints (rfc8484):
  • https://mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query
  • https://dns.google/dns-query (was: https://dns.google.com/experimental)
  • https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query
  • more:
    • https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/DNS-over-HTTPS#publicly-available-servers
    • https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Public+Resolvers
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_recursive_name_server (HTTPS column)

[stskeeps]

Fwiw, proof of concept of binary DNS query over HTTPS in a browser, https://gist.github.com/stskeeps/d64d01f1ed42402405e294e5806f0970. -- one thing to keep in mind is that for example Google's doesn't give proper CORS headers

[SgtPooki]

js-ipfs is being deprecated in favor of Helia. You can learn more about this deprecation and read the migration guide.

Please feel to reopen with any comments by 2023-06-02. We will do a final pass on reopened issues afterwards (see https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/issues/4336).

This sounds like something we may want to consider in helia/libp2p if it's not already resolved. I'm not sure of the status, pinging @achingbrain

[achingbrain]

This is still todo: https://github.com/ipfs/helia-ipns/blob/main/packages/ipns/src/utils/resolve-dns-link.browser.ts#L48

This issue can be moved to https://github.com/ipfs/helia-ipns/

[SgtPooki]

Do we want to use https://github.com/vasco-santos/dns-over-http-resolver here?