DNSSEC ensures that the results of DNS queries (for DNSSEC enabled domains) are authentic. For example, integralblue.com uses DNSSEC, so if an attacker (using a man in the middle or spoofing attack) changes the IP address that www.integralblue.com resolves to, then a DNS resolver supporting DNSSEC will be able to tell and return an error.

DNSSEC provides authentication and integrity; it does not provide for confidentiality. For confidentiality (so your ISP, for example, cannot tell what DNS queries are being made), you can easily add TLS over DNS which I’ve described how to do in OpenWrt in another post.

By setting up DNSSEC on your OpenWrt router, you protect your entire network as all clients will perform DNS requests using your OpenWrt router’s DNS server which in turn will do DNSSEC checking for all queries.

Setting up DNSSEC on OpenWrt 18.06 and 19.07 is remarkably easy. You can use the LuCI web interface to perform these steps or shell command over ssh; I’m providing the commands here.

Refresh the package list: opkg update Swap dnsmasq for dnsmasq-full (-full includes DNSSEC support) and remove odhcpd-ipv6only: opkg install dnsmasq-full --download-only && opkg remove dnsmasq odhcpd-ipv6only && opkg install dnsmasq-full --cache . && rm *.ipk Edit /etc/config/dhcp

In the config dnsmasq section, add (or change the values of, if these settings already exist) these settings: option dnssec '1'

option dnsseccheckunsigned '1' Restart dnsmasq so the changes take effect: /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

Enjoy knowing that now no one is tampering with your DNS queries.