HexPawb is a from-scratch implementation of onion routing, using modern technology to decentralize network loads without compromising anonymity. It natively supports:
- Anonymously connecting to normal servers over the network
- Hosting anonymous services with end-to-end encrypted connections
- Running as a SOCKS proxy or VPN
- Disabling internet access when not connected
- Automatic relay management
If this seems similar to Tor, you're right! This is not groundbreaking software. It's a fun project, and tries to do some interesting things.
HexPawb is a system design and network protocol which provides anonymization through a relay network, like Tor. It's also the name of the primary HexPawb protocol network.
hexpawb, aka libhexpawb, is the Rust crate implementing the HexPawb network protocol.
It has bindings in several languages.
pawb is the command-line tool using hexpawb to create a VPN or SOCKS proxy to access things over the HexPawb network.
furtive is the command-line tool using hexpawb to host furtive services, its version of onion services.
HexPawb is sort of a knockoff of Tor -- at least in the sense that it serves a similar purpose, but pragmatically it also borrows several features from Tor. So if Tor is Mage Hand, allowing someone to interact at a distance without the affiliation being obvious, then this is Hex Pawb.
An explanation of everything from high-level overviews to bit-by-bit dissections of network formats is available in the wiki. If you know a bit about Tor, it'll look very familiar.