Comment by OptionOfT 3 days ago
Honestly, I'm fine with that. Applications themselves should not be resolving DNS outside of what I set in settings.
The reasons applications do this is to prevent users from blocking telemetry etc. It's my computer, I should have final say on what goes out.
All major browsers now implement the ability to use a browser-defined resolver.
Seeing this getting downvoted is fucking wild.
I remember 20+ years ago when one of the most commonly seen attacks was malware configuring a proxy server in Internet Explorer which by design overrode the operating system's configuration.
What a lot of software does today by ignoring the operating system in lieu of their own shit is just like the above. If your program doesn't (or can't) respect the operating system, your shit is malware and you should reconsider who you write code for.
> Seeing this getting downvoted is fucking wild.
If you consider the source of income of what's most likely a considerable portion of the HN community, I think this makes more sense. Apple is one of the only companies interested in preventing tracking, and it hurts, in the billions sort of way [1][2].
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2022/10/08/appl...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/07/26/apples-do...
I had a great Windows firewall like this about 20 years ago. It would pop up a dialog for every network request from an app. You could block or allow based on port or destination, or "block all". It was amazing, because as you say, it made it very obvious when an app was trying shady shit.
I would love to have that back, but I was never able to find a firewall so hostile to the user experience of the general population.
It sounds similar in spirit to Little Snitch, mentioned in the article (on macOS, but which inspired OpenSnitch, which runs on Linux). It is awesome indeed, if a bit overwhelming at first. Most regular users would just uninstall it to avoid the constant barrage of requests initially, and then every time a new piece of software tries to connect to anything.
Shady shit? Not every network request is a call to an HTTP REST API.
Blocking socket APIs would break every app that supports other protocols. Goodbye file transfer apps, VPN apps, file sync apps, database tools, SSH clients, remote desktop clients, audio and video conferencing apps, etc.
There is no such thing as a remotely cross-platform DNS resolution API that has the system do the lookup and does not utterly suck for asynchronous use.