How to make a SSH tunnel publicly accessible?

If you check the man page for ssh, you'll find that the syntax for -R reads:

-R [bind_address:]port:host:hostport

When bind_address is omitted (as in your example), the port is bound on the loopback interface only. In order to make it bind to all interfaces, use

ssh -R \*:8080:localhost:80 -N [email protected]

or

ssh -R 0.0.0.0:8080:localhost:80 -N [email protected]

or

ssh -R "[::]:8080:localhost:80" -N [email protected]

The first version binds to all interfaces individually. The second version creates a general IPv4-only bind, which means that the port is accessible on all interfaces via IPv4. The third version is probably technically equivalent to the first, but again it creates only a single bind to ::, which means that the port is accessible via IPv6 natively and via IPv4 through IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses (doesn't work on Windows, OpenBSD).  (You need the quotes because [::] could be interpreted as a glob otherwise.)

Note that if you use OpenSSH sshd server, the server's GatewayPorts option needs to be enabled (clientspecified, or, in rare cases, to yes) for this to work (check file /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the server). Otherwise (default value for this option is no), the server will always force the port to be bound on the loopback interface only.

Edit:

-g works for local forwarded ports, but what you want is a reverse/remote forwarded port, which is different.

What you want is this.

Essentially, on example.com, set GatewayPorts=clientspecified in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

--- previous (incorrect) answer ---

Use the -g option. From ssh's man page:

-g     Allows remote hosts to connect to local forwarded ports.

Here's my answer for completion:

I ended up using ssh -R ... for tunneling, and using socat on top of that for redirecting network traffic to 127.0.0.1:

tunnel binded to 127.0.0.1: ssh -R mitm:9999:<my.ip>:8084 me@mitm

socat: mitm$ socat TCP-LISTEN:9090,fork TCP:127.0.0.1:9999

Other option is to do a local-only tunnel on top of that, but i find this much slower

mitm$ ssh -L<mitm.ip.address>:9090:localhost:9999 localhost