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.
DNS requires that there be only one instance of a given zone (the zone can be served by multiple authoritative servers, but only one instance of the zone is allowed). You simply cannot get a DNS server to first query a local forward zone (i.e. locally defined, be it a master or slave zone) and then query another DNS server if it does not find a matching entry. You are effectively overriding the very definition of the somerealdomain.com on your local server (so as far as it is concerned, the public version of that zone does not exist).
There are a number of workarounds possible. If you have access to the public zone file (directly or by zone transfer), then a suitable script could backfill your local zone with the public entries which are not overridden locally. This is not trivial and requires some in-depth knowledge.
An alternative would be to place a filtering DNS proxy in front of your DNS server - the kind of DNS proxy used for penetration testing which can be configured to forward queries to different DNS servers based on the query's contents (or fake answers directly - which is effectively what you are doing).
Finally, you could use a DNS cache such as dnsmasq (same principle as a filtering DNS proxy) - see this answer for details.
Best Answer
If that's the problem, why not set up a forwarder in AD to your desired DNS server? Open the DNS mmc snap-in on your AD server, right click on the server name (not the zone or any of the folders) and choose "Properties". This will open a dialog window that include a tab labeled "Forwarders" where you can add the IP address of your desired DNS server and set the lookup order.