Ngrok, Inc

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ngrok, Inc
Private
Founded2015
FounderAlan Shreve
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California
Key people
Alan Shreve (CEO), Peter Shafton (CTO), Heather McLinden (Chief People Officer), Sam Richard (Chief Revenue Officer), Guru Chahal (Board Member)
Websitengrok.com
Footnotes / references
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Ngrok, Inc is an American software company headquartered in San Francisco, California.[1]. The company develops ngrok, a globally-distributed API gateway and reverse proxy with a web-based management interface.

History

The ngrok (pronounced "en-grock", /ˈɛn.ɡrɒk/) software was originally created in March 2013[2] by the company's founder-to-be Alan Shreve. It was created as an exercise to learn the Go programming language[3], and was a port of the tool localtunnel[4] created by Jeff Lindsay whom Alan worked with at Twilio.

ngrok started off as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license, transitioning later to be closed source with the release of ngrok 2.0 in April 2015.[5]

ngrok 2.0 was a full rewrite of ngrok 1.0 to get away from early mistakes made in 1.0, and to make it possible for ngrok to be deployed in a multi-region configuration.[6]

In July 2015 ngrok LLC was registered in California[7]. The company was later incorporated in Delaware on January 1st 2022.[8]

In December 2022 ngrok, Inc. raised $50 million in a Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Coatue Management.[9]

Products and Services

ngrok provides a unified gateway for applications on the internet, with the ability to provide a single interface no matter where the application is deployed.

Globally distributed load balancing

ngrok is built on top of AWS[10] and has points of presence in 8 regions: Singapore, Sydney, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Tokyo, São Paolo, Ohio, California[11]. Requests to services behind ngrok are load balanced to the closest location to where the request originated. By default, TLS termination is also done at the closest location to the request origin.

Authentication

ngrok integrates with OAuth providers, giving you the option to require authentication for your services[12]. OIDC is also supported[13].

Mutual TLS

ngrok supports mutual authentication through mTLS[14], allowing you to restrict access to only trusted clients.

Kubernetes Operator

ngrok offers a Kubernetes Operator you can install in your cluster to create ngrok-managed Ingress resources[15]

Monitoring

ngrok offers the ability to monitor HTTP traffic through a web-based dashboard[16]. Data that's visible by default includes request path, request method, originating IP address, status code, and duration. Full request and response body logging is available through settings.

Use in cyber attacks

From as early as 2014, ngrok has been used in malicious ways[17]. ngrok offers a free and verified HTTPS endpoint that you can use to host whatever you want, this has been abused to host phishing pages masquerading as Google[18] and Facebook[19]. It was used to distribute the Lokibot malware[20]. It has been used in cryptomining attacks[21]. It was used by the Cozy Bear hacking group for command and control[22]

References

  1. ↑ "Privacy Policy". ngrok.com. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  2. ↑ "first commit". GitHub. March 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  3. ↑ "The Changelog #210: ngrok, ngrok, ngrok with Alan Shreve". The Changelog (Podcast). August 19, 2016. Event occurs at 27:10. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  4. ↑ "progrium/localtunnel". GitHub. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  5. ↑ "ngrok 2.0". Product Hunt. April 2015. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  6. ↑ "The Changelog #210: ngrok, ngrok, ngrok with Alan Shreve". The Changelog (Podcast). August 19, 2016. Event occurs at 48:08. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  7. ↑ "Business Search". California Secretary of State. State of California. Retrieved September 15, 2025. Entity ID: 201521010309
  8. ↑ "Entity Search". Delaware Division of Corporations. State of Delaware. Retrieved September 15, 2025. Entity ID: 4599079
  9. ↑ Butcher, Mike (December 13, 2022). "ngrok, a service to help devs deploy sites, services and apps, raises $50M". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 15, 2025.; "Reverse proxy startup ngrok raises $50M in funding". SiliconANGLE. December 13, 2022. Retrieved September 15, 2025.; "ngrok raises $50M for Ingress as a Service". ngrok.com. December 13, 2022. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  10. ↑ "131: How to Grow a Developer Tool from a Side Project". Compressed.fm (Podcast). Event occurs at 30:45. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  11. ↑ "Points of Presence". ngrok Documentation. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  12. ↑ "OAuth". ngrok Documentation. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  13. ↑ "OIDC". ngrok Documentation. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  14. ↑ "Agent Mutual TLS Termination". ngrok Documentation. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  15. ↑ "Kubernetes Operator". ngrok Documentation. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  16. ↑ "Traffic Inspection". ngrok Documentation. ngrok, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  17. ↑ Shreve, Alan (May 29, 2014). "Automate Away Your Problems: Combatting Illegal Abuses of ngrok". inconshreveable.com. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  18. ↑ Shreve, Alan (May 29, 2014). "Automate Away Your Problems: Combatting Illegal Abuses of ngrok". inconshreveable.com. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  19. ↑ "Ngrok Platform Abused by Hackers to Deliver a New Wave of Phishing Attacks". Cyble. 15 February 2021. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  20. ↑ "Digital Criminals Abusing Secure Tunneling Service to Deliver LokiBot". Security Boulevard. May 2019. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  21. ↑ "Cryptojacking Attacks Summer 2023". Wiz. 2023. Retrieved September 15, 2025.
  22. ↑ "Russian hackers use ngrok feature and WinRAR exploit to attack embassies". BleepingComputer. Retrieved September 15, 2025.

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