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proxychains-ng

v4.16 open-source

ProxyChains-NG is a UNIX program that hooks network-related libc functions in dynamically linked programs and redirects connections through SOCKS4a/5 or HTTP proxies.

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Summary

proxychains-ng is an open-source command-line tool that redirects the network connections of an existing dynamically linked program through a chain of SOCKS4a/5 or HTTP proxies, using LD_PRELOAD to hook libc's networking calls rather than rewriting the program itself. You run it by prefixing a command, like proxychains4 telnet google.com 80, on Linux, BSD, Mac, or Haiku. It fits post-exploitation and anonymization work, aimed at red teamers or pentesters who need to route an existing tool's traffic through a proxy without modifying it; the README notes the approach is a hack that can fail on scripts or daemonizing programs, and suggests an iptables-based setup as a more reliable alternative in those cases. Started in 2011 with 39 contributors, it remains active with 6 commits and 4 releases in the past year.

ProxyChains-NG is a UNIX program that hooks network-related libc functions in dynamically linked programs and redirects connections through SOCKS4a/5 or HTTP proxies.

How proxychains-ng helps

Can I route an existing compiled tool's traffic through a proxy chain without touching its source or rebuilding it?

it intercepts the program's networking calls at the libc level via a preloaded library, so the same binary connects through the configured proxies instead of directly

Which proxy actually carried a connection when a chain is in use?

each hop in the configured chain is used in sequence for the connection, so tracing the chain's order shows which proxy the traffic passed through

Is a target reachable only through an internal foothold rather than directly?

prefixing the command forces its connection attempts through the chain, so a successful connection confirms the route works through that path rather than the local network

Is my proxy chain actually hiding my real address, or just adding hops that leak it?

running a simple outbound check like an IP-echo service through the chain shows the address the target sees, exposing whether the real origin is masked

Will this particular program work reliably under a proxied redirect, or should I use a different approach?

since the redirection is a libc-hooking hack, scripts, daemonizing processes, and programs that load modules dynamically can fail silently or bypass it, signaling that an iptables-based redirect is the safer choice for that case

Can I test a proxy chain without changing the system-wide configuration?

it accepts a specified configuration file at the command line and runs from the build directory unaltered, so a different chain can be tried per invocation without touching the installed setup

Languages

Not documented

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for proxychains-ng, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail proxychains-ng puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

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Releases

1 entry

  1. January 20221

    1 entry

    1. v4.16 Jan 23, 2022 · release notes

      proxychains-ng v4.16 adds OSX Monterey DYLD hooking, IPv6IPv6The current version of the Internet Protocol, standardized by the IETF, using 128-bit addresses to replace the exhausted IPv4 space. Cyber tools target it because modern networks run dual-stack or IPv6-only. localnets, and fixes regressions

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v4.16 https://github.com/rofl0r/proxychains-ng.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v4.16

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in rofl0r/proxychains-ng, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 3 +2 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 1 +1 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close < 1 day first maintainer reply 7.2 hours
    6. Open backlog 132 of 520 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 132
    3. Contributors / month 0
    4. Commits / month 0
    5. Stars 10,681
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • other 100%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Libraries its release ships

    What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.

    None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.

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