Pierce Firewall from within using netcat (e.g., for Bittorrent)
Opening ports in a firewall If you find yourself behind a firewall that you cannot control, you often have no open network ports for others to contact you on. End-users generally only need this for peer to peer applications, such as Bittorrent and Skype. Pretend to initiate an outbound connection using Netcat Each time you make an outbound connection, the firewall creates a temporary opening to allow the other side to respond (say, Google to return your search results). You can exploit this feature to run Bittorrent or other servers. Pierce the firewall with a packet that originates from your computer and from the port that you want others to later contact you on (say, 6881 for Bittorrent). The easiest is to send a packet using netcat Using openbsd netcat, this worked for me: nc -p 6881 www.google.com 80 Don't wait for a reply, just send the request, close netcat and open your real application. Note that the port will only remain open for a limited time if there is no traffic, ...