Debugging DNS leaks: why your VPN isn't hiding what you think it is
The article discusses the issue of DNS leaks when using a VPN, highlighting that while traffic may be tunneled, DNS queries often are not. This can lead to a false sense of security as users' DNS requests may still be visible to their ISP. The author provides steps to diagnose and fix the problem to ensure all DNS queries are routed through the VPN tunnel.
- ▪DNS resolution occurs at the OS level and is not automatically included in the VPN tunnel.
- ▪Common culprits for DNS leaks include systemd-resolved, browsers with DNS-over-HTTPS, and applications using their own resolvers.
- ▪To confirm a DNS leak, users can monitor DNS traffic on their physical interface using tools like tcpdump.
DEV.to (Top) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 4,924 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/alanwest/debugging-dns-leaks-why-your-vpn-isnt-hiding-what-you-think-it-is-4ecg |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 01:21:15 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T01:33:21.205Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T01:33:21.205Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | K4d8HI9Vh-Eo |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3834047) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Alan West Posted on May 18 Debugging DNS leaks: why your VPN isn't hiding what you think it is #networking #devops #security #linux Last month I was setting up a hardened dev environment for a client doing security research. They wanted all traffic from their workstation tunneled through a VPN, no exceptions. Simple, right? Install WireGuard, flip the toggle, done. Then I ran a leak test and watched their real ISP-assigned DNS server pop up on the report. The traffic was tunneled.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
Discussion
0 commentsMore from DEV.to (Top)
