Abstract: Examples of the present disclosure describe systems and methods for zero trust domain name system (DNS) (ZTDNS) based networking. A computing device implementing ZTDNS based networking blocks any outbound connections that are not included in a list of trusted IP addresses. The list of trusted IP addresses is updated in response to the computing device receiving from a trusted DNS server an IP address corresponding to a DNS request. In some examples, the ZTDNS based networking intercepts and evaluates outbound communications for applications that implement a custom application DNS client. In other examples, the ZTDNS based networking intercepts and evaluates outbound communications for virtual environments. The outbound communications for both the custom application DNS client and the virtual environments are proxied through a local DNS client of the computing device.