The best method is via the response policy zone in Bind 9.8.1 or newer. It allows you to override single records in arbitrary zones (and there's no need to create a whole subdomain for that, only the single record you want to change), it allows you to override CNAMEs, etc. Other solutions such as Unbound cannot override CNAMEs.
https://www.redpill-linpro.com/sysadvent/2015/12/08/dns-rpz.html
EDIT: Let's do this properly then. I will document what I've done based on the tutorial linked above.
My OS is Raspbian 4.4 for Raspberry Pi, but the technique should work without any changes on Debian and Ubuntu, or with minimal changes on other platforms.
Go to where your Bind config files are kept on your system - here it's in /etc/bind
. Create in there a file called db.rpz
with the following contents:
$TTL 60
@ IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. (
2015112501 ; serial
1h ; refresh
30m ; retry
1w ; expiry
30m) ; minimum
IN NS localhost.
localhost A 127.0.0.1
www.some-website.com A 127.0.0.1
www.other-website.com CNAME fake-hostname.com.
What does it do?
- it overrides the IP address for
www.some-website.com
with the fake address 127.0.0.1
, effectively sending all traffic for that site to the loopback address
- it sends traffic for
www.other-website.com
to another site called fake-hostname.com
Anything that could go in a Bind zone file you can use here.
To activate these changes there are a few more steps:
Edit named.conf.local
and add this section:
zone "rpz" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/db.rpz";
};
The tutorial linked above tells you to add more stuff to zone "rpz" { }
but that's not necessary in simple setups - what I've shown here is the minimum to make it work on your local resolver.
Edit named.conf.options
and somewhere in the options { }
section add the response-policy
option:
options {
// bunch
// of
// stuff
// please
// ignore
response-policy { zone "rpz"; };
}
Now restart Bind:
service bind9 restart
That's it. The nameserver should begin overriding those records now.
If you need to make changes, just edit db.rpz
, then restart Bind again.
Bonus: if you want to log DNS queries to syslog, so you can keep an eye on the proceedings, edit named.conf.local
and make sure there's a logging
section that includes these statements:
logging {
// stuff
// already
// there
channel my_syslog {
syslog daemon;
severity info;
};
category queries { my_syslog; };
};
Restart Bind again and that's it.
Test it on the machine running Bind:
dig @127.0.0.1 www.other-website.com. any
If you run dig on a different machine just use @the-ip-address-of-Bind-server instead of @127.0.0.1
I've used this technique with great success to override the CNAME for a website I was working on, sending it to a new AWS load balancer that I was just testing. A Raspberry Pi was used to run Bind, and the RPi was also configured to function as a WiFi router - so by connecting devices to the SSID running on the RPi I would get the DNS overrides I needed for testing.
Best Answer
If you want things to work easily and painlessly, do the following:
Run Windows DNS servers only on Active Directory domain controller computers. (This insures they have copies of your Active Directory-integrated DNS zones).
Insure that your Windows DNS servers have either "Root Hints" specified (which is the case by default) or have a "Forwarder" specified referring to a DNS server at your IPS.
Verify that all Windows machines (servers and clients) have only Windows DNS servers specified as their DNS servers. (No non-Windows DC-based DNS servers should be specified in any server, client, or DHCP configurations.)
Verify that your firewall rules permit the Windows DNS servers outbound UDP port 53 to the Internet (either the entire 'net, if you're using "Root Hints" or your ISP DNS servers, if you're using "Forwarders").
This is the recommended configuration from Microsoft and will result in both Internet and internal name resolution w/o "leaking" dynamic registration requests from Windows machines to your ISP or other external DNS servers.
This answer is rather assumptive, but being that you mentioned SBS it's likely that this is a fairly simplistic network and the above is your most painless way to get what you're looking for moving forward.
If it were me, BTW, I'd use root hints rather than forwarders. I don't trust my ISP not to do nasty things with DNS (respond with their own "serach engine" site rather than returing NXDOMAIN's for invalid domain names, etc).