Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

(mullvad.net)

91 points | by mywacaday 1 hour ago

8 comments

  • iamnothere 0 minutes ago
    [delayed]
  • pbhjpbhj 1 hour ago
    >We want a public service to be available. Going forward, we will support Quad9 instead of running it ourselves. Running a privacy-focused public DNS service is a highly specialized undertaking, and the Quad9 Foundation is the undisputed leader in the field. Rather than duplicating their efforts to achieve only part of what they do, we're putting those resources toward financially supporting Quad9 instead.

    Brilliant.

    • pbhjpbhj 1 hour ago
      On the Quad9 website:

      >Since Quad9 already performs DNSSEC validation, DNSSEC being enabled in the forwarder will cause a duplication of the DNSSEC process, significantly reducing performance and potentially causing false BOGUS responses.

      This sounds dodgy. Surely that means Quad9 can poison my DNS?

      • Arainach 55 minutes ago
        Not if Quad9 is using DNSSEC, no.

        What's the specific threat you're envisioning? If it involves Quad9 themselves being malicious, what would DNSSEC on the forwarding prevent?

        This page explains how all of this works in detail: https://quad9.net/news/blog/quad9-enables-dnssec-on-all-serv...

        • zamadatix 19 minutes ago
          DNSSEC validation on your forwarder would prevent a maliciously modified record from Quad9 (or others) from being accepted locally - i.e. "Quad9 can poison my DNS".

          I've always been of two minds on this. On one hand, that concern is beyond any reasonable level of security/performance/reliability tradeoff for most any user. At the same time, it is a bit of a shame DNS doesn't have a more scalable & performant approach to security which can just always be done without having to consider it a tradeoff, however minor in practice.

    • oofdere 39 minutes ago
      Quad9 doesn't have an adblocking DNS service though, so it's not really a replacement.
      • 1970-01-01 5 minutes ago
        This is a very important detail. Adblock in 2026 is necessary and DNS will transparently do a lot of that work for you. It isn't just about lightning fast lookups and five-nines uptime anymore.
    • seany 50 minutes ago
      I'm all for supporting quad9; but what if we just disable dnssec instead, it really solves nothing and continued support of it just makes it show up in compliance guides unnecessarily.
  • mentalgear 15 minutes ago
    I'm always wondering whether those centralized privacy services are not the easiest first target for three-letter-agencies to infiltrate to gain access to the most relevant users to track - and what currently would prevent them from doing so if they haven't already ? Maybe, as with the case of many TOR nodes , they might be running them.
  • ianmurrays 34 minutes ago
    Does anyone know of good alternatives that also block ads? Seems Quad9 doesn't.
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 33 minutes ago
    These was one of the fastest DoH services for pipelined queries over single TCP connection

    IME, it was much faster than Quad9 for this purpose

    First Mullvad shuts down its Google search proxy

    Now its DoH service

    What's next

  • em-bee 1 hour ago
    disappointing, because alternatives matter too. quad9 and other well known servers are potentially blocked by some countries, so the more lesser known services there are the better.
  • nullmatrix 29 minutes ago
    [flagged]