RedWarden vs RedGuard: 2026 Comparison
RedWarden is a free offensive security tool. RedGuard is a free offensive security tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best offensive security fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Red teamers and adversary simulation teams need RedWarden to slip Cobalt Strike traffic past detection without rebuilding infrastructure for every engagement; its packet inspection and malleable profile correlation do what most proxies can't, which is actually correlate your profiles to your C2 behavior instead of just forwarding bytes. The 991 GitHub stars and active maintenance reflect real adoption in mature red team shops running repeatable assessments. Skip this if your team runs exclusively off-the-shelf frameworks without customizing profiles or if you lack the operator experience to debug why a particular defensive sensor still catches your callbacks; this is a precision tool that rewards knowledge of your target's defenses.
Penetration testers and red team operators running command-and-control infrastructure need RedGuard specifically for its traffic filtering and redirection layer, which breaks the pattern matching that defenders rely on to detect C2 beacons. The tool is free and maintains active GitHub development with 1,561 stars, making it a low-friction addition to existing tooling. This is not for blue teams or organizations building detection strategies; RedGuard is an attacker's operational security tool, not a defensive control.
