samyk/pwnat
The only tool/technique to punch holes through firewalls/NATs where multiple clients & server can be behind separate NATs without any 3rd party involvement. Pwnat is a newly developed technique, exploiting a property of NAT translation tables, with no 3rd party, port forwarding, DMZ, DNS, router admin requirements, STUN/TURN/UPnP/ICE, or spoofing. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
49/100
- Activity 59
- Release rhythm 8
- Longevity 100
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 5136
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 250
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
3918 stars · 508 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
pwnat is a C-based command-line tool that enables clients and servers behind separate NATs to communicate directly without port forwarding, DMZ setup, or any third-party relay. It exploits properties of NAT translation tables to establish UDP tunnels through firewalls, allowing TCP traffic to be tunneled over UDP.
Use cases
- punch holes through firewalls and NATs without port forwarding
- connect to a server behind a NAT from behind another NAT
- tunnel SSH or HTTP through restrictive networks
- proxy traffic to remote hosts without a middleman server
- establish direct peer-to-peer connections without STUN or TURN
- access home services from behind corporate firewalls
When to choose
- you need NAT-to-NAT connectivity with zero third-party infrastructure
- you cannot configure port forwarding or DMZ on either router
- you want to tunnel TCP services over UDP through firewalls
- you need a lightweight, self-contained networking tool with no dependencies
When to avoid
- your network uses symmetric NATs that block this technique
- you need guaranteed connectivity across all firewall types
- you require high-throughput or low-latency tunneling at scale
- you need a maintained solution with active development and broad platform support
Facets
cli-tool · maturity maintenance
networking proxy vpn security networking security privacy censorship-circumvention developer-tools cross-platform cli nat-traversal nat-hole-punching udp-tunneling firewall-penetration p2p tunneling no-third-party c networking-tool icmp-based linux macos
2 sources
- readme: https://github.com/samyk/pwnat · fetched 2026-08-28 · 782787a7b23c
- homepage: https://samy.pl/pwnat/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · 45ff67f0b1fb
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| samyk/pwnat | main | 49 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem