Published Oct 28, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT

Umair Khurshid is a technology writer and developer with a strong focus on Linux, FreeBSD, cloud infrastructure, and automation. Before focusing on writing, Umair worked as a developer and DevOps engineer building and automating cloud-native systems.

Pi-hole is one of my favorite services that solves an everyday problem without requiring expensive hardware. Install it on a Raspberry Pi, configure your devices to use it for DNS, and you can block unwanted domains while monitoring DNS activity across your network.

However, Pi-hole also handles network requests and provides an administrative interface that can expose a lot of sensitive information. A few careless configuration choices can turn this useful service into a security liability. I think the biggest danger is assuming that a device dedicated to blocking ads does not need the same protection as a NAS, firewall, or server.…