What is DNS-Over-HTTPS?

DNS-over-HTTPS is an enhanced privacy protocol for the internet’s naming system that’s aimed at creating a safer browsing experience for all users.

Microsoft recently became the latest tech player to announce that it would be implementing DNS-over-HTTPS – also known as ‘DoH’ – to improve the privacy and reliability of internet traffic for Windows users by supporting encrypted DNS queries.

The move, which joins earlier initiatives taken by both Mozilla and Google, will “close one of the last remaining plain-text domain name transmissions in common web traffic”, Microsoft said.

DoH, which has generally been welcomed by the tech community, will prevent certain security and privacy lapses inherent in how the web currently functions, such as ISP tracking and DNS spoofing. But it also entails some concerns.

How to enable DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) in your browser?

While ISPs are still questioning and building the case against the new protocol, many popular browsers have already started experimenting with DoH.

In order to enable DoH in your browser, you just have to turn on the experimental flag –

• • Google Chrome – Vist chrome://flags/#dns-over-https

• • Edge (Chromium version) – edge://flags/#dns-over-https

• • Opera – Visit opera://flags/opera-doh

• • Vivaldi – Visit vivaldi://flags/#dns-over-https

• • Brave – Visit brave://flags/#dns-over-https

• • Mozilla Firefox – You can find the “Enable DNS over HTTPS” in the browser settings.

DNS-over-HTTPS

DoH conducts DNS operations using secure http urls and mapping DNS queries and responses into http exchanges, using default media formatting types.

While DoH uses existing protocols for communication, the IETF emphasizes that “[The] described approach is more than a tunnel over HTTP.” Aligned with existing http features, DNS servers and clients supporting DoH are called ‘DoH server’ and ‘DoH client’ respectively, as they can be used for more than only DNS.

While DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS are colloquially used as different protocols, because DoH uses https it also includes TLS security. The key difference between DoH and DoT is the manner in which DNS operations are conducted.