What information about the user's browsing is in principle available to each of the following, if they cared to access it?
Since your question is asking about DNS over TLS, I'm not going to get into HTTP over SSL.
DNS typically goes over the wire in the clear and the information that can be seen is:
- Source IP (user)
- Destination IP (DNS server)
- Query (e.g. www.example.com)
- Response (e.g. 93.184.216.34)
By using DNS over TLS, only the following information would be visible to outsiders:
- Source IP (user)
- Destination IP (DNS server)
This definitely helps with privacy. Also, keep in mind that this helps with MITM attacks, since in order to establish a TLS session, you need to exchange certificates, thus allowing the ability to verify the server's identity.
The website
They will always have access to all of your information for each and every time you visit their site. Your history will be in their web server logs and will show your IP address (unless you use a VPN).
The DNS provider
They will see everything that you query and have a record of it if they keep logs, again, ties to your IP (unless you run a VPN).
The user's ISP
They won't be able to see the queries you are performing, but they can see the sites you are going to, but not what you are doing on them due to HTTPS. They may be able to tell the site by the destination IP address of your traffic and/or by the server name in the TLS client handshake. Again, if you use VPN, no one of it is visible to them.
An eavesdropper
Same as the user's ISP.
Which of these parties, if any, could obtain sufficient information to relate the user's browsing to a real-world identity or location?
No single party would be able to make that determination. It would be more likely to be someone obtaining logs from multiple sources in order to figure that out.
How does this differ from accessing the same (HTTPS) website over standard (not-over-TLS) DNS?
Honestly, I don't feel that there would be much of a difference, since in HTTPS, sniffers can see your destination IP and also most of the time the server name is specified in the TLS handshake.
Hope that answers your questions!
