My university department has a local DNS server that serves all of the computers in the department. I am concerned about the privacy and security implications of this. Posit that I am merely one of the users on a workstation, with no privileged access to the DNS server, or any HTTP proxy.
- Can I make use of the DNS server to determine whether someone else in the department has accessed a page on some arbitrary external WWW site? Can I do so for accesses within the last few seconds?
- If the answer to the preceding question is "Yes." what tradeoffs do I have to make in order to close this leak? If adjustments need to be made to the DNS server, what form would they take? Could I address this purely from the individual workstation end, without touching the server?
- Would installing more than one DNS server affect this? If so, how? How about running DNS servers on the workstations?
- Is this actually a leak? Would I be able to determine the same information without using the DNS server? Would I be able to determine better information, indeed?