ANONYMIZED-DNSCRYPT.txt

Anonymized DNSCrypt specification
=================================

1. Protocol overview
--------------------

DNSCrypt is a protocol that secures communications between clients and
recursive DNS resolvers.

While the communications themselves are secure, and while the
stateless nature of the DNSCrypt protocol helps against fingerprinting
individual devices, DNS server operators can still observe client IP
addresses.

A common way to prevent this is to use DNSCrypt over Tor or SOCKS
proxies. However, Tor significantly increases the latency of DNS
responses. And public SOCKS proxies are difficult to operate, as they
can easily be abused for purposes unrelated to DNS.

Anonymized DNSCrypt is a simple extension to the DNSCrypt v2 protocol,
allowing queries and responses to be relayed by an intermediate server.

[Client]----(encrypted query)--->[Relay]----(encrypted query)--->[Server]
[Client]<--(encrypted response)--[Relay]<--(encrypted response)--[Server]

The client encrypts queries using the server public key as in the
standard DNSCrypt protocol. The relay only passively forwards encrypted
packets, and doesn't know the shared secret. As a result:

- A relay doesn't learn anything about DNS queries and responses being
exchanged between clients and servers. It cannot tamper with them
either.
- A server doesn't learn anything about client IP addresses. The only
IP addresses it can observe are addresses of relays.

A DNSCrypt server can simultaneously act as a relay, on the same IP
address and port.

2. Client queries
-----------------

The Anonymized DNSCrypt protocol can use the UDP and TCP transport
protocols, and can easily be implemented on top of existing DNSCrypt
client and server implementations.

Recall that the format of a DNSCrypt client query is the following:

<dnscrypt-query> ::= <client-magic> <client-pk> <client-nonce> <encrypted-query>

An Anonymized DNSCrypt query is a standard DNSCrypt query, sent to a
relay with a prefix containing information about the server address:

<anondnscrypt-query> ::= <anon-magic> <server-ip> <server-port> <dnscrypt-query>

<anon-magic> ::= 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x00 0x00

<server-ip> ::= a 16 bytes encoded IPv6 address. IPv4 addresses should
be mapped to IPv6 (::ffff:<ipv4 address>).

<server-port> ::= the server port number, encoded as two bytes in big-endian.

For example, a query for a server whose IP address is 192.0.2.1
(::ffff:c000:0201) and answering on port 443 (0x01bb) should be sent to a
relay as follows:

0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x00 0x00
0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff 0xff 0xc0 0x00 0x02 0x01
0x01 0xbb
<dnscrypt-query>

Queries over UDP are sent as-is. Queries over TCP are prefixed by
their length, encoded as two bytes in big-endian.

3. Relays
---------

Relays must accept queries both over TCP and UDP. They must
communicate with upstream servers over UDP, even if client queries
were originally sent over TCP.

If a packet starting with <anon-magic> is received by a relay, the
relay must:

- decode the target server IP and port number
- validate that the IP address is not in a private range and that the
port number is in an allowed range. If this is not the case, the relay
must immediately respond to clients with an empty packet.
- validate that <dnscrypt-query> doesn't start with <anon-magic>.
- validate that <dnscrypt-query> cannot be confused with the QUIC
protocol. In particular, it shouldn't start with 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 (seven all-zero bytes). If this is the case, the
relay must immediately respond with an empty packet.
- otherwise, forward <dnscrypt-query> unmodified to the server.

Once a response from the server has been received, the relay:

- must verify that the response is smaller than the query.
- may validate that the response:
  - either starts with <resolver-magic>
    (0x72 0x36 0x66 0x6e 0x76 0x57 0x6a 0x38) followed by <client-nonce>
  - or starts with a DNSCrypt certificate response
    (* * * * 0x00 0x01 0x00 0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x01 0x32 0x0d 0x64
     0x6e 0x73 0x63 0x72 0x79 0x70 0x74 0x2d 0x63 0x65 0x72 0x74)
- must forward the entire response unmodified to the client if the
  previous steps succeed.

4. Operational considerations
-----------------------------

Clients choose the relay they want to use, as well as the server. As
not doing so would defeat the purpose of Anonymized DNSCrypt, users
should carefully choose them so that they are operated by different
entities. Having these services on different networks is also
recommended.

Relay operators should refuse forwarding to reserved IP ranges. Server
ports may also be restricted. In particular, port numbers used by
popular UDP services should be disallowed. As most DNSCrypt servers
run on port 443, it may be reasonable to allow only that port.

5. Current implementations and additional resources
---------------------------------------------------

- encrypted-dnscrypt-server: https://github.com/jedisct1/encrypted-dns-server
- dnscrypt-proxy: https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy
- a list of DNS relays:
  https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-resolvers/blob/master/v3/relays.md