SShuttle: Where Transparent Proxy Meets VPN Meets SSH

SShuttle is a transparent proxy server that works as a poor man’s VPN. Forwards over ssh. Doesn’t require admin. Works with Linux and MacOS. Supports DNS tunneling.

As far as I know, it is the only program that solves the following common case:

  • Your client machine (or router) is Linux, FreeBSD, or MacOS.
  • You have access to a remote network via ssh.
  • You don’t necessarily have admin access on the remote network.
  • The remote network has no VPN, or only stupid/complex VPN protocols (IPsec, PPTP, etc). Or maybe you are the admin and you just got frustrated with the awful state of VPN tools.
  • You don’t want to create an ssh port forward for every single host/port on the remote network.
  • You hate openssh’s port forwarding because it’s randomly slow and/or stupid.
  • You can’t use openssh’s PermitTunnel feature because it’s disabled by default on openssh servers; plus it does TCP-over-TCP, which has terrible performance.

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Obtaining

  • Debian stretch or later:

apt-get install sshuttle

  • Arch Linux:

pacman -S sshuttle

  • Fedora:

dnf install sshuttle

  • NixOS:

nix-env -iA nixos.sshuttle

  • From PyPI:

sudo pip install sshuttle

  • Clone:

git clone https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle.git
cd sshuttle
sudo ./setup.py install

  • FreeBSD:

ports
cd /usr/ports/net/py-sshuttle && make install clean
pkg
pkg install py36-sshuttle

It is also possible to install into a virtualenv as a non-root user.

  • From PyPI:

virtualenv -p python3 /tmp/sshuttle
. /tmp/sshuttle/bin/activate
pip install sshuttle

  • Clone:

virtualenv -p python3 /tmp/sshuttle
. /tmp/sshuttle/bin/activate
git clone https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle.git
cd sshuttle
./setup.py install

  • Homebrew:

brew install sshuttle

  • Nix:

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.sshuttle