bore

Bore is a command-line tool that makes a service running on your local computer accessible from the public internet, without needing to configure your router or firewall. If you are running a web server on your laptop and want to share it with someone else, or test it from a different device, bore creates a tunnel that forwards traffic from a public address to your local machine.

The basic use is one command: you tell bore which local port your service is on, and it gives you a public address at bore.pub with a randomly assigned port number that anyone can reach. You can also choose a specific port if you prefer.

There is a public bore server at bore.pub that you can use without any setup on your end. If you need more control, you can also run your own bore server on any machine you have access to using a single binary. No configuration files are required.

Bore supports an optional shared secret for authentication, which prevents others from using your self-hosted server. The authentication uses HMAC challenges rather than simple password transmission. The tunneled traffic itself is not encrypted by bore by default, so the tool is best used alongside HTTPS or another transport-layer encryption if privacy matters.

The tool is written in Rust and is intentionally narrow in scope: it forwards TCP traffic and nothing else. The entire codebase is around 400 lines. Installers are available for macOS via Homebrew, Arch Linux via the AUR, via Cargo for Rust developers, as a Docker image, and as prebuilt binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It is released under the MIT license.