Tun2proxy is both an executable binary that can be run, and a library that can be used in Rust programs.

Installing `tun2proxy-bin` `udpgw-server` executables

Assuming you have Rust/Cargo installed, run this command in a terminal:

cargo install tun2proxy

It will make tun2proxy-bin udpgw-server commands available in your PATH if you've allowed the PATH to be modified when installing Rust. cargo uninstall tun2proxy uninstalls.

Adding `tun2proxy` library as a dependency

Run this command in a terminal, in your project's directory:

cargo add tun2proxy

To add it manually, edit your project's Cargo.toml file and add to the [dependencies] section:

tun2proxy = "0.7.19"

The tun2proxy library will be automatically available globally. Read the tun2proxy library documentation.

Back to the crate overview.

Readme

tun2proxy

A tunnel interface for HTTP and SOCKS proxies on Linux, Android, macOS, iOS and Windows.

Additional information can be found in the wiki

Features

HTTP proxy support (unauthenticated, basic and digest auth)
SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 support (unauthenticated, username/password auth)
SOCKS4a and SOCKS5h support (through the virtual DNS feature)
Minimal configuration setup for routing all traffic
IPv4 and IPv6 support
GFW evasion mechanism for certain use cases (see issue #35)
SOCKS5 UDP support
Native support for proxying DNS over TCP
UdpGW (UDP gateway) support for UDP over TCP, see the wiki for more information

Build

Clone the repository and cd into the project folder. Then run the following:

cargo build --release

Building Framework for Apple Devices

To build an XCFramework for macOS and iOS, run the following:

./build-apple.sh

Installation

Install from binary

Download the binary from releases and put it in your PATH.

Authenticity Verification

Since v0.2.23 build provenance attestations are supported. These allow you to ensure that the builds have been generated from the code on GitHub through the GitHub CI/CD pipeline. To verify the authenticity of the build files, you can use the GitHub CLI:

gh attestation verify <*.zip file> --owner tun2proxy

Install from source

If you have rust toolchain installed, this should work:

cargo install tun2proxy

Note: In Windows, you need to copy wintun DLL to the same directory as the binary. It's %USERPROFILE%\.cargo\bin by default.

Setup

Automated Setup

Using --setup, you can have tun2proxy configure your system to automatically route all traffic through the specified proxy. This requires running the tool as root and will roughly perform the steps outlined in the section describing the manual setup, except that a bind mount is used to overlay the /etc/resolv.conf file.

You would then run the tool as follows:

sudo ./target/release/tun2proxy-bin --setup --proxy "socks5://1.2.3.4:1080"

Apart from SOCKS5, SOCKS4 and HTTP are supported.

Note that if your proxy is a non-global IP address (e.g. because the proxy is provided by some tunneling tool running locally), you will additionally need to provide the public IP address of the server through which the traffic is actually tunneled. In such a case, the tool will tell you to specify the address through --bypass <IP/CIDR> if you wish to make use of the automated setup feature.

Manual Setup

A standard setup, which would route all traffic from your system through the tunnel interface, could look as follows:

# The proxy type can be either SOCKS4, SOCKS5 or HTTP.
PROXY_TYPE=SOCKS5
PROXY_IP=1.2.3.4
PROXY_PORT=1080
BYPASS_IP=123.45.67.89

# Create a tunnel interface named tun0 which you can bind to,
# so we don't need to run tun2proxy as root.
sudo ip tuntap add name tun0 mode tun
sudo ip link set tun0 up

# To prevent a routing loop, we add a route to the proxy server that behaves
# like the default route.
sudo ip route add "$BYPASS_IP" $(ip route | grep '^default' | cut -d ' ' -f 2-)

# Route all your traffic through tun0 without interfering with the default route.
sudo ip route add 128.0.0.0/1 dev tun0
sudo ip route add 0.0.0.0/1 dev tun0

# If you wish to also route IPv6 traffic through the proxy, these two commands will do.
sudo ip route add ::/1 dev tun0
sudo ip route add 8000::/1 dev tun0

# Make sure that DNS queries are routed through the tunnel.
sudo sh -c "echo nameserver 198.18.0.1 > /etc/resolv.conf"

./target/release/tun2proxy-bin --tun tun0 --proxy "$PROXY_TYPE://$PROXY_IP:$PROXY_PORT"

This tool implements a virtual DNS feature that is used by switch --dns virtual. When a DNS packet to port 53 is detected, an IP address from 198.18.0.0/15 is chosen and mapped to the query name. Connections destined for an IP address from that range will supply the proxy with the mapped query name instead of the IP address. Since many proxies do not support UDP, this enables an out-of-the-box experience in most cases, without relying on third-party resolvers or applications. Depending on your use case, you may want to disable this feature using --dns direct. In that case, you might need an additional tool like dnsproxy that is configured to listen on a local UDP port and communicates with a third-party upstream DNS server via TCP.

When you terminate this program and want to eliminate the impact caused by the above several commands, you can execute the following command. The routes will be automatically deleted with the tunnel device.

sudo ip link del tun0

CLI

Tunnel interface to proxy.

Usage: tun2proxy-bin [OPTIONS] --proxy <URL> [ADMIN_COMMAND]...

Arguments:
  [ADMIN_COMMAND]...  Specify a command to run with root-like capabilities in the new namespace when using `--unshare`. This could be
                      useful to start additional daemons, e.g. `openvpn` instance

Options:
  -p, --proxy <URL>                        Proxy URL in the form proto://[username[:password]@]host:port, where proto is one of
                                           socks4, socks5, http. Username and password are encoded in percent encoding. For example:
                                           socks5://myname:pass%40word@127.0.0.1:1080
  -t, --tun <name>                         Name of the tun interface, such as tun0, utun4, etc. If this option is not provided, the
                                           OS will generate a random one
      --tun-fd <fd>                        File descriptor of the tun interface
      --close-fd-on-drop <true or false>   Set whether to close the received raw file descriptor on drop or not. This setting is
                                           dependent on [tun_fd] [possible values: true, false]
      --unshare                            Create a tun interface in a newly created unprivileged namespace while maintaining proxy
                                           connectivity via the global network namespace
      --unshare-pidfile <UNSHARE_PIDFILE>  Create a pidfile of `unshare` process when using `--unshare`
  -6, --ipv6-enabled                       IPv6 enabled
  -s, --setup                              Routing and system setup, which decides whether to setup the routing and system
                                           configuration. This option requires root-like privileges on every platform.
                                           It is very important on Linux, see `capabilities(7)`
  -d, --dns <strategy>                     DNS handling strategy [default: direct] [possible values: virtual, over-tcp, direct]
      --dns-addr <IP>                      DNS resolver address [default: 8.8.8.8]
      --virtual-dns-pool <CIDR>            IP address pool to be used by virtual DNS in CIDR notation [default: 198.18.0.0/15]
  -b, --bypass <IP/CIDR>                   IPs used in routing setup which should bypass the tunnel, in the form of IP or IP/CIDR.
                                           Multiple IPs can be specified, e.g. --bypass 3.4.5.0/24 --bypass 5.6.7.8
      --tcp-timeout <seconds>              TCP timeout in seconds [default: 600]
      --udp-timeout <seconds>              UDP timeout in seconds [default: 10]
  -v, --verbosity <level>                  Verbosity level [default: info] [possible values: off, error, warn, info, debug, trace]
      --daemonize                          Daemonize for unix family or run as Windows service
      --exit-on-fatal-error                Exit immediately when fatal error occurs, useful for running as a service
      --max-sessions <number>              Maximum number of sessions to be handled concurrently [default: 200]
      --udpgw-server <IP:PORT>             UDP gateway server address, forwards UDP packets via specified TCP server
      --udpgw-connections <number>         Max connections for the UDP gateway, default value is 5
      --udpgw-keepalive <seconds>          Keepalive interval in seconds for the UDP gateway, default value is 30
  -h, --help                               Print help
  -V, --version                            Print version

Currently, tun2proxy supports HTTP, SOCKS4/SOCKS4a and SOCKS5. A proxy is supplied to the --proxy argument in the URL format. For example, an HTTP proxy at 1.2.3.4:3128 with a username of john.doe and a password of secret is supplied as --proxy http://john.doe:secret@1.2.3.4:3128. This works analogously to curl's --proxy argument.

Container Support

Docker

Tun2proxy can serve as a proxy for other Docker containers. To make use of that feature, first build the image:

docker buildx build -t tun2proxy .

This will build an image containing a statically linked tun2proxy binary (based on musl) without OS.

Alternatively, you can build images based on Ubuntu or Alpine as follows:

docker buildx build -t tun2proxy --target tun2proxy-ubuntu .
docker buildx build -t tun2proxy --target tun2proxy-alpine .

Next, start a container from the tun2proxy image:

docker run -d \
	-v /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun \
	--sysctl net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=0 \
	--cap-add NET_ADMIN \
	--name tun2proxy \
	tun2proxy --proxy proto://[username[:password]@]host:port

You can then provide the running container's network to another worker container by sharing the network namespace (like kubernetes sidecar):

docker run -it \
	--network "container:tun2proxy" \
	ubuntu:latest

Docker Compose

Create a docker-compose.yaml file with the following content:

services:
  tun2proxy:
    volumes:
      - /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
    sysctls:
      - net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=0
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    container_name: tun2proxy
    image: ghcr.io/tun2proxy/tun2proxy-ubuntu:latest
    command: --proxy proto://[username[:password]@]host:port
  alpine:
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true
    network_mode: container:tun2proxy
    image: alpine:latest
    command: apk add curl && curl ifconfig.icu && sleep 10

Then run the compose file

docker compose up -d tun2proxy
docker compose up alpine

Configuration Tips

DNS

When DNS resolution is performed by a service on your machine or through a server in your local network, DNS resolution will not be performed through the tunnel interface, since the routes to localhost or your local network are more specific than 0.0.0.0/1 and 128.0.0.0/1. In this case, it may be advisable to update your /etc/resolv.conf file to use a nameserver address that is routed through the tunnel interface. When virtual DNS is working correctly, you will see log messages like DNS query: example.org for hostnames which your machine is connecting to after having resolved them through DNS.

Note that software like the NetworkManager may change the /etc/resolv.conf file automatically at any time, which will result in DNS leaks. A hacky solution to prevent this consists in making the file immutable as follows: sudo chattr +i "$(realpath /etc/resolv.conf)".

IPv6

Some proxy servers might not support IPv6. When using virtual DNS, this is not a problem as DNS names are resolved by the proxy server. When DNS names are resolved to IPv6 addresses locally, this becomes a problem as the proxy will be asked to open connections to IPv6 destinations. In such a case, you can disable IPv6 on your machine. This can be done either through sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1 and sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1 or through ip -6 route del default, which causes the libc resolver (and other software) to not issue DNS AAAA requests for IPv6 addresses.

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people:

Installing tun2proxy-bin udpgw-server executables

Adding tun2proxy library as a dependency

Installing `tun2proxy-bin` `udpgw-server` executables

Adding `tun2proxy` library as a dependency