ngrok vs pwnat
GitHub Stats
About ngrok
ngrok creates secure tunnels from a public endpoint to a locally running service. It captures all traffic for inspection, replay, and analysis. While designed for legitimate development and testing workflows, ngrok is commonly used in red team operations to exfiltrate data, establish reverse tunnels to C2 infrastructure, and bypass NAT/firewall restrictions. The free tier provides random subdomains; paid plans offer custom domains and IP restrictions.
About pwnat
pwnat (pronounced 'poe-nat') enables connections between two hosts both behind separate NATs without requiring either side to configure port forwarding. It exploits a quirk in how NAT implementations handle ICMP time-exceeded messages to establish bidirectional communication channels. One side runs as a server and the other as a client; the tool handles NAT traversal automatically. This makes it useful for penetration testing scenarios where direct connectivity is blocked by network address translation, enabling reverse shells and tunnel establishment through otherwise impassable network boundaries.
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Shared
ngrok only
pwnat only