HINFO Record

In one line

The HINFO (Host Information) record stores the CPU type and operating system of a host. Defined in the original DNS RFC (1035), HINFO was intended for network management tools to know the capabilities of each host. In practice, it is rarely used and considered a security risk – publishing hardware and OS information helps attackers fingerprint targets.

Description

HINFO records contain two character-string fields: CPU and OS. They appear in original DNS zone files for network inventory purposes. Security guidance recommends against publishing HINFO records because they reveal infrastructure details. Some organizations use them for internal DNS zones. RFC 8482 restricted responses to ANY queries partly to limit information leakage from records like HINFO.

Examples

server.example.com. 3600 IN HINFO "Intel Xeon" "Linux"

dig server.example.com HINFO