PRODUCTS / hench DNS

Instant DNS security

Defend your entire network against malware, malicious ads, and phishing attempts.

Low latency. High impact. Achieve effortless protection across every device. Who could've predicted that in 2026 freedom from disruptive online threats would fit into just one megabyte?

Portable

Static linkage

Supports any modern Linux® distribution: from edge IoT devices to distributed cloud systems.

Optimal

~1 MB footprint

Optimised hot path with Bloom filters & zero copy networking to handle any RPS.

Simple

No dependencies

Fully self-contained for instant deployment to any compatible platform.

Deploy

Download the latest build

Your new advent calendar, public builds unlock every week until 2026

Roadmap

  1. Technology Preview

    Core functionality: a high-performance stub DNS resolver with user-defined domain filters

    • Dual-stack IP
    • Probabilistic filtering
    • Query caching
    • TOML config
  2. DNS Extensions

    Increased flexibility through CLI args and the introduction of common DNS extensions

    • CLI
    • DNSSEC
    • EDNS
  3. General Availability

    Support for recursively resolving queries and handling DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS

    • Recursive resolver
    • DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH)
    • DNS-over-TLS (DoT)

Configure

Example configuration

deny.txt
example.com
subdomain.example.com
0.0.0.0 example.com
henchdns.toml
[network]
bind_addr = "127.0.0.1:53"
upstream = [
"192.0.2.1:53",
"[2001:db8::42]:53"
]

[domains]
filters = [
"./deny.txt"
]

[misc]
metrics = false

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