Google Chrome will soon receive a new feature to boost its security. The said upgrade is known as the DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), which was previously used by other web browsers.
Why Google Chrome Linux Did not Adopt DNS Earlier?
According to a report by Tech Radar, a group of security experts has questioned why Google Chrome took a long time before releasing the privacy feature to the Linux platform.
If Chrome finally allows this feature in its system, this means that all queries and responses connected to the DNS will be passed on the HTTPS. However, the case of Linux was slightly different from the other browser systems of Google.
Chrome could have accepted the addition of DNS-over-HTTPS on its Linux platform if it weren't for the built-in DNS client, which was automatically disabled by the system.
This made experts think that Google Chrome should enable the nsswitch.conf, a DNS configuration in Linux. However, it turns out that the said configuration seems to be complex for the system usage.
To solve this issue, the Chromium Project has built established solid browser support for reading and parsing the DNS configuration. Disabling DoH configurations that are unsupported by the system is another part of the solution.
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DoH Server Should be Selected First in the Google Chrome Settings
In a public document written by the Chromium Project in Google Docs, a seven-page design document revealed some explanation about the DNS configuration.
"As Chrome's resolver does not support changing such mechanisms or their order, Chrome's support for respecting nsswitch.conf will be limited to detection of whether or not the configuration is a common configuration compatible with Chrome behavior," the statement reads in the documents.
Moreover, the speed of the DNS was also mentioned in the document. It was also said there that the lookup times of the DNS have a direct impact on the load times of the page.
If the server shows poor performance when compared to the traditional DNS server, there could be a negative effect on the load performance of the page.
In earlier launches of DoH, the server was found to be slightly slower than the old DNS server. The difference seen in this issue was only minimal to the general performance of Google Chrome.
The team also noted the DoH's simplicity through its control surfaces that were already used by several platforms. If users want to control DoH, they need to get through the "Secure DNS" configuration page found in the security settings of Chrome.
The document also unveiled that automatic upgrading of DoH or relying on the built-in resolve will not happen when using Google Chrome. The only way to make that possible is by going to the configuration settings of the browser and selecting the DoH server.
At the time, the release of the DoH feature in Google Chrome Linux remains undetermined, yet it could come as v.91 or v.92. In the upcoming weeks, testing of the DNS client will now be open before officially launching it to the public soon.
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Written by Joen Coronel
