dnseen - DNS queries analyzer

dnseen is a simple DNS queries analyzer that works on top of the tcpdump logs.

• Simple: no GUI/TUI, no modes, easy command-line interface
• Stands on the shoulders of giants: used tcpdump and systemd at its core
• Separation of concerns: logs and a stats report produced by different components and can be used independently
• Filtering: select a datetime range, filter out domains with regex, filter by domain hits, etc.

$ dnseen
|                             :domain | :hits | :blocked |
|-------------------------------------+-------+----------|
|        profile.accounts.firefox.com |   831 |    false |
|                          github.com |   531 |    false |
|                      www.google.com |   351 |    false |
|                    alive.github.com |   332 |    false |
|                      api.github.com |   331 |    false |
|                     www.youtube.com |   326 |    false |
|                           slack.com |   260 |    false |
|                       app.slack.com |   246 |    false |
|                          slackb.com |   232 |    false |
|                clojurians.slack.com |   230 |    false |
...

Install

Dependencies

dnseen requires the following dependencies:

• Linux OS
• tcpdump
• babashka
• (optionally) logrotate

Installer script

Install dnseen with the installer script on Linux:

curl -sLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pilosus/dnseen/master/install
chmod +x install
./install

By default, the command will be installed in /usr/local/bin (you may need to use sudo to run the installer script in this case!). You can change installation directory with the option --install-dir:

./install --install-dir <your-dir-under-$PATH>

To install a specific version instead of the latest one use --version option:

./install --version 0.2.0

Installer script downloads a package archive file to a temporary directory under /tmp, you can change it with the option --download-dir:

./install --download-dir <your-dir-under-$PATH>

You can uninstall dnseen and all its corresponding services with the --uninstall option (can be used along with --install-dir):

./install --uninstall

For more options see installer script's help:

./install --help

Manual install

1. Clone the repo and cd to it:

git clone https://github.com/pilosus/dnseen.git
cd dnseen

2. Copy content of the dnseen.service file and paste to a new systemd service:

sudo -E systemctl edit dnseen --full --force

Alternatively, simply copy the service file:

sudo cp dnseen.service /etc/systemd/system/

3. Reload systemd, start the service, enable it to start automatically on system boot, and make sure it works:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start dnseen.service 
sudo systemctl enable dnseen.service
sudo systemctl status dnseen.service 

4. (Optionally) Add logrotate config file to make logs rotated:

sudo cp dnseen.logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/dnseen

Make sure config is valid:

sudo logrotate --debug /etc/logrotate.d/dnseen

If needed, force rotation and restart the service:

sudo logrotate --force /etc/logrotate.d/dnseen
sudo systemctl restart dnseen.service

Use

Basic usage takes the whole log and prints the report without any filters applied, domains ordered by number of hits in descending order:

dnseen

when invoking command that is not under your $PATH (e.g. if you followed the manual installation guide), use:

./dnseen

Apply some filters if needed:

dnseen \
    --from "2023-12-01T00:00:00" \
    --to "2024-01-01T00:00:00" \
    --match '\.(goog|google)$' \
    --exclude '(?i).*domains\.' \
    --hosts '/etc/hosts' \
    --hits 10 \
    --head 20 \
    --no-pretty \
    -vvv

A path to a file or a directory containing hosts file can be provided to get statistics about blocked domains, i.e. domains that resolve to either localhost or 0.0.0.0. Use --totals flag to get aggregation statistics of the report itself:

dnseen \
    --hosts '/etc/hosts.d/' \
    --hosts '/etc/hosts.old' \
    --totals

Configuration parameters can also be defined in a EDN config file. A default path to the config file is either $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dnseen/config.edn or $HOME/.config/dnseen/config.edn. It can be overriden with the --config option:

dnseen --config ~/.dnseen

Get more help with:

dnseen --help

Filters are applied to the raw logs in the order the corresponding CLI options are shown in the help message (e.g. --match is applied before --exclude).