darkk/redsocks

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

3617 stars · 900 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

redsocks is a transparent TCP-to-proxy redirector written in C that uses firewall rules (iptables, pf, ipfw) to redirect any TCP connection through SOCKS4, SOCKS5, or HTTPS (HTTP/CONNECT) proxies. It runs as a daemon on Linux/BSD systems and supports proxy authentication plus a fake DNS server that forces resolvers to fall back to TCP.

Use cases

• redirect all system TCP traffic through a SOCKS5 proxy using iptables
• route traffic through an OpenSSH DynamicForward SOCKS port via firewall policies
• make a non-transparent proxy work transparently on a Linux router
• force DNS queries over TCP so they can be proxied
• pass traffic through a corporate proxy without configuring each application
• use a DVB ISP accelerator proxy that lacks transparent proxy support

When to choose

• you need system-wide or network-wide proxy redirection on Linux/BSD with firewall control
• your proxy is SOCKS4/5 or HTTPS CONNECT and apps don't natively support proxies
• you run a router (e.g., OpenWrt) and want to route selected traffic through a proxy

When to avoid

• you want to redirect traffic to Tor - use Tor's TransPort or tor-aware software instead
• you need to proxy many connections over a single SSH tunnel (head-of-line blocking degrades performance)
• you need a truly transparent proxy at the connection level - redsocks completes the local TCP handshake first
• you're on Android/iOS without root - use VpnService/NETunnelProvider-based apps instead
• you rely on the http-relay module for plain HTTP proxies - it's hacky and vulnerable to CVE-2009-0801

Facets

cli-tool · maturity maintenance

proxy networking security privacy networking privacy security self-hosted bsd cli transparent-proxy socks5 iptables traffic-redirection c linux android

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="darkk/redsocks")