cluvexstudio/aether

Aether is a client built to get around internet censorship on heavily restricted networks. It automatically finds routes that still work, sets up an encrypted tunnel through them, and then exposes a local SOCKS5 proxy that your other apps and browsers can connect through. Unlike a typical VPN client, it is specifically designed with the assumption that the network is actively trying to detect and block it, using techniques like deep packet inspection, protocol fingerprinting, throttling of certain traffic types, and blocking known endpoints. To deal with that, Aether only trusts a gateway once it has actually proven it can pass real traffic, not just because it answered an initial handshake. It supports several transport methods: MASQUE, which disguises traffic as ordinary HTTPS over HTTP/3 or HTTP/2, WireGuard for faster connections on less aggressively monitored networks, and a nested WireGuard mode that runs one WireGuard tunnel inside another for an extra layer of encryption. It also includes traffic obfuscation, automatic reconnection with a quick reconnect to the last working gateway, and configuration through command line flags, environment variables, or interactive prompts. Prebuilt binaries are available for Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android through Termux, including a one line install script for Termux that detects your device's architecture and verifies the download. It can also run inside Docker using a prebuilt container image. Building from source requires a recent stable version of Rust, a C or C++ compiler, and CMake, along with Cloudflare's Quiche library placed alongside the project folder. Once running, Aether exposes a SOCKS5 proxy on a local port that other applications can route their traffic through. Documentation is available in both English and Persian. The README does not state its license inline, pointing instead to a separate LICENSE file for details.