Tailcat: Secure Tunnels in Seconds (Tailscale)

Tailcat is an open-source tool by Tailscale that enables secure point-to-point encrypted tunnels between machines using WireGuard, similar to netcat but without requiring a Tailscale account or control plane. It works by having one side run a server that generates a connection token, which the other side uses to connect, with traffic encrypted end-to-end and relayed through Tailscale's free DERP network or custom relays. The tool requires no root access or system configuration changes, functioning entirely as a userspace library and CLI application.