Unbound

In the Army, we had “Secure Information Channels.” Unbound is your secure, recursive DNS channel.

Description

Unbound is a validating, recursive, caching DNS resolver. It’s designed to be fast, secure, and lean. In our lab, it’s often used on our firewalls (pfSense/OPNsense) to provide local DNS resolution with DNSSEC support.

Knowledge Check

  • Have you enabled DNSSEC validation?
  • Are you using any upstream resolvers (e.g., Cloudflare, Google, Quad9)?

Common Pitfalls

  • Cache Poisoning: Ensure you have basic protections against cache poisoning.
  • Upstream Latency: If your upstream resolvers are slow, your entire network will feel sluggish.

Related: DNS, Firewall