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safing
portmaster
Go2020–2025
safing / portmaster

portmaster

🏔 Love Freedom - ❌ Block Mass Surveillance

9Distinct people
16Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
14.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

🏔 Love Freedom - ❌ Block Mass Surveillance

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year16 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-06-16 14:43:49 UTC to 2025-01-24 18:51:05 UTC.

02462020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

16 sources
For Context: Technical Introduction from https://github.com/safing/portmaster#technical-introduction Portmaster is a privacy suite for your Windows and Linux desktop. Base Technology - Portmaster integrates into network stack using nfqueue on Linux and a kernel driver (WFP) on Windows. - Packets are intercepted at the raw packet level - every packet is seen and can be stopped. - Ownership of connections is found using eBPF and `/proc` on Linux and a kernel driver and the IP Helper API (`iphlpapi.dll`) on Windows. - Most settings can be defined per app, which can be matched in different ways. - Support for special processes with weird or concealed paths/actors: --- Snap, AppImage and Script support on Linux --- Windows Store apps and svchost.exe system services support on Windows - Everything is 100% local on your device. (except the SPN,
Read the rest
naturally) --- Updates are fully signed and downloaded automatically. --- Intelligence data (block lists, geoip) is downloaded and applied automatically. - The Portmaster Core Service runs as a system service, the UI elements (App, Notifier) run in user context. - The main UI still uses electron as a wrapper :/ - but this will change in the future. You can also open the UI in the browser Feature: Secure DNS - Portmaster intercepts "astray" DNS queries and reroutes them to itself for seamless integration. - DNS queries are resolved by the default or configured DoT/DoH resolvers. - Full support for split horizon and horizon validation to defend against rebinding attacks. Feature: Privacy Filter - Define allowed network scopes: Localhost, LAN, Internet, P2P, Inbound. - Easy rules based on Internet entities: Domain, IP, Country and more. - Filter Lists block common malware, ad, tracker domains etc. Feature: Network History ($) - Record connections and their details in a local database and search all of it later - Auto-delete old history or delete on demand Feature: Bandwidth Visibility ($) - Monitor bandwidth usage per connection and app Feature: SPN - Safing Privacy Network ($) - A Privacy Network aimed at use cases "between" VPN and Tor. - Uses onion encryption over multiple hops just like Tor. - Routes are chosen to cover most distance within the network to increase privacy. - Exits are chosen near the destination server. This automatically geo-unblocks in many cases. - Exclude apps and domains/entities from using SPN. - Change routing algorithm and focus per app. - Nodes are hosted by Safing (company behind Portmaster) and the community. - Speeds are pretty decent (>100MBit/s).
In Portmaster Application Firewall v1.4
This is exactly the things we are aiming for, as Portmaster is intended to be as easy to use as possible. We currently already have special support for AppImage and Snap packages on Linux and Windows Store apps and "svchost.exe services" on Windows. Additionally, we can detect common interpreters on Linux and correctly match the script file instead of the interpreter. The support for these systems is implemented as "tags", which are attached to a process internally in Portmaster. These tags are then used to match a settings profile. You can find the implementations here: https://github.com/safing/portmaster/tree/develop/process/ta... We almost had an implementation ready for what you want (matching the parent process), but we had to abort due to some difficulties in matching: The questions we could find a good answer for, was where do we
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put the information whether which binaries are merged into / inherit from the parent? The ideal scenario from a UX perspective would be to declare it on the parent as an "include all sub-processes" option. But this would mean we would need to fully resolve all parent processes including their settings every time we evaluate a process. We deemed this to be too slow and too complex for a quick and clean solution. If you or anyone else has a great idea, I'd be happy to have a call to discuss.
In After Snowden, we quit our jobs to build privacy software. It reached 1.0
Portmaster still (and probably always will) require a local DNS server. Why? Because there is not always and will be less ways in the future to find out which Domain an IP address belongs to. GlassWire will probably become quite blind as soon as TLS1.3 is rolled out and working as intended. I will look into Mullvad compatibility again in the coming weeks. I think they also improved some stuff on their side. User from 2 weeks ago: "Can confirm that Portmaster V.1.0.0 with Mullvard V2022.4 DNS set to 127.0.0.1 and the same setting on the netwerk controller both can life together." from https://github.com/safing/portmaster/issues/313
In Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
I evaluated this a few months ago and absolutely loved it. It was more polished and easier to use than I expected. Since the website made a big deal about it being alpha I went in expecting a little pain. The only major problem I hit was that everytime a snap would update it would appear as a new application and I had to reapply the rules. At the time there was a proposal for a change to fix this but it hadn't been implemented yet. I think once that lands, if it hasn't already, I'll be a loyal daily user. EDIT: Adding GitHub issue link https://github.com/safing/portmaster/issues/398
In Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
Looks like they implemented their own windows kernel driver [1] [2] for intercepting packets. And since I see BOTH domain names and applications that won't trust custom SSL CA in their website, I guess they get the domain name from the ssl handshake packets (sni) [3] which is in plaintext [1] https://github.com/safing/portmaster/blob/22507e879be95c7b0f... [2] https://github.com/safing/portmaster-windows-kext [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
In Portmaster – Open-source network monitor and firewall

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