More on this when we get to the shells section. This is the feature that is considered a security hole. You notice the -e option, this is not available in the openbsd version. In this case we’ll run nc.traditional -h to see the command line If you install the different variants of netcat on your system you may have to invoke the command with the full binary name. To install it you can then run sudo apt install netcat-traditional or via compiling from source which you can get from the project page.

Longer maintained and is on version 1.10.īy running apt search netcat on an ubuntu/debian based machine, it appears as netcat or netcat-traditional. This does not typically come preinstalled unless you are using a distro like kali linux. Netcat traditional is the original implementation and was written by a guy known as Hobbit. You can also find netcat ports for windows that support similar commands to what we’ll look at. The variants we will look at are linux based. Netcat having being initially written for Unix, There are several variants of netcat but most of the core functionality and command line options are very similar. Netcat is a great tool and valuable for CTFs and PoCs. Put some more consideration into securing your pentest operations. Someone sniffing the network could capture your activity in plain text in cases such as a reverse shell. I came to the realization that most of the material we consume when learning pentesting touches very little on secure practices on live engagements once you have those hacking skills, hence this update forĮspecially for pentesters, using netcat could be bad for operational security during live pentest engagements. If you would like to test out these commands in a lab environment without the need to install them on your own machine have a look at my scenario on CYBERRANGES In this article we’ll look at different applications of netcat and how it can be useful in day to day activities of a pentester, security professional, sysadmin etc… Netcat has been referred to as the TCP/IP / networking swiss army knife.

Netcat is a tool that reads and writes data across network connections, using TCP or UDP protocol.

Port used by netcat windows listen