.\" $OpenBSD: nc.1,v 1.68 2015/03/26 10:35:04 tobias Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1996 David Sacerdote .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products .\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES .\" OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. .\" IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, .\" INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT .\" NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, .\" DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY .\" THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT .\" (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF .\" THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd January 17, 2023 .Dt NC 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm nc .Nd arbitrary TCP and UDP connections and listens .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm nc .Bk -words .Op Fl 46DdEFhklMNnrStUuvz .Op Fl e Ar IPsec_policy .Op Fl I Ar length .Op Fl i Ar interval .Op Fl -no-tcpopt .Op Fl -sctp .Op Fl -crlf .Op Fl O Ar length .Op Fl P Ar proxy_username .Op Fl p Ar source_port .Op Fl s Ar source .Op Fl T Ar toskeyword .Op Fl -tun Ar tundev .Op Fl V Ar rtable .Op Fl w Ar timeout .Op Fl X Ar proxy_protocol .Oo Xo .Fl x Ar proxy_address Ns Oo : Ns .Ar port Oc .Xc Oc .Op Ar destination .Op Ar port .Ek .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm (or .Nm netcat ) utility is used for just about anything under the sun involving TCP, UDP, or .Ux Ns -domain sockets. It can open TCP connections, send UDP packets, listen on arbitrary TCP and UDP ports, do port scanning, and deal with both IPv4 and IPv6. Unlike .Xr telnet 1 , .Nm scripts nicely, and separates error messages onto standard error instead of sending them to standard output, as .Xr telnet 1 does with some. .Pp Common uses include: .Pp .Bl -bullet -offset indent -compact .It simple TCP proxies .It shell-script based HTTP clients and servers .It network daemon testing .It a SOCKS or HTTP ProxyCommand for .Xr ssh 1 .It and much, much more .El .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl 4 Forces .Nm to use IPv4 addresses only. .It Fl 6 Forces .Nm to use IPv6 addresses only. .It Fl -crlf Convert LF into CRLF when sending data over the network. .It Fl D Enable debugging on the socket. .It Fl d Do not attempt to read from stdin. .It Fl E Shortcut for .Qo .Li "-e 'in ipsec esp/transport//require'" .Li "-e 'out ipsec esp/transport//require'" .Qc , which enables IPsec ESP transport mode in both directions. .It Fl e If IPsec support is available, then one can specify the IPsec policies to be used using the syntax described in .Xr ipsec_set_policy 3 . This flag can be specified up to two times, as typically one policy for each direction is needed. .It Fl F Pass the first connected socket using .Xr sendmsg 2 to stdout and exit. This is useful in conjunction with .Fl X to have .Nm perform connection setup with a proxy but then leave the rest of the connection to another program (e.g.\& .Xr ssh 1 using the .Xr ssh_config 5 .Cm ProxyUseFdpass option). .It Fl h Prints out .Nm help. .It Fl I Ar length Specifies the size of the TCP receive buffer. .It Fl i Ar interval Specifies a delay time interval between lines of text sent and received. Also causes a delay time between connections to multiple ports. .It Fl k Forces .Nm to stay listening for another connection after its current connection is completed. It is an error to use this option without the .Fl l option. When used together with the .Fl u option, the server socket is not connected and it can receive UDP datagrams from multiple hosts. .It Fl l Used to specify that .Nm should listen for an incoming connection rather than initiate a connection to a remote host. It is an error to use this option in conjunction with the .Fl p , .Fl s , or .Fl z options. Additionally, any timeouts specified with the .Fl w option are ignored. .It Fl M Collect per-connection TCP statistics using the .Xr stats 3 framework and print them in JSON format to .Xr stderr 4 after the connection is closed. .It Fl N .Xr shutdown 2 the network socket after EOF on the input. Some servers require this to finish their work. .It Fl n Do not do any DNS or service lookups on any specified addresses, hostnames or ports. .It Fl -no-tcpopt Disables the use of TCP options on the socket, by setting the boolean TCP_NOOPT socket option. .It Fl -sctp Use SCTP instead of the default option of TCP. .It Fl O Ar length Specifies the size of the TCP send buffer. .It Fl P Ar 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. .It Fl p Ar source_port Specifies the source port .Nm should use, subject to privilege restrictions and availability. It is an error to use this option in conjunction with the .Fl l option. .It Fl r Specifies that source and/or destination ports should be chosen randomly instead of sequentially within a range or in the order that the system assigns them. .It Fl S Enables the RFC 2385 TCP MD5 signature option. .It Fl s Ar source Specifies the IP of the interface which is used to send the packets. For .Ux Ns -domain datagram sockets, specifies the local temporary socket file to create and use so that datagrams can be received. It is an error to use this option in conjunction with the .Fl l option. .It Fl T Ar toskeyword Change IPv4 TOS value. .Ar toskeyword may be one of .Ar critical , .Ar inetcontrol , .Ar lowdelay , .Ar netcontrol , .Ar throughput , .Ar reliability , or one of the DiffServ Code Points: .Ar ef , .Ar af11 ... af43 , .Ar cs0 ... cs7 ; or a number in either hex or decimal. .It Fl t Causes .Nm to send RFC 854 DON'T and WON'T responses to RFC 854 DO and WILL requests. This makes it possible to use .Nm to script telnet sessions. .It Fl -tun Ar tundev Causes .Nm to use the provided .Xr tun 4 for input and output rather than the default of stdin and stdout. .It Fl U Specifies to use .Ux Ns -domain sockets. .It Fl u Use UDP instead of the default option of TCP. For .Ux Ns -domain sockets, use a datagram socket instead of a stream socket. If a .Ux Ns -domain socket is used, a temporary receiving socket is created in .Pa /tmp unless the .Fl s flag is given. .It Fl V Ar rtable Set the routing table .Pq Dq FIB to be used. .It Fl v Have .Nm give more verbose output. .It Fl w Ar timeout Connections which cannot be established or are idle timeout after .Ar timeout seconds. The .Fl w flag has no effect on the .Fl l option, i.e.\& .Nm will listen forever for a connection, with or without the .Fl w flag. The default is no timeout. .It Fl X Ar proxy_protocol Requests that .Nm should use the specified protocol when talking to the proxy server. Supported protocols are .Dq 4 (SOCKS v.4), .Dq 5 (SOCKS v.5) and .Dq connect (HTTPS proxy). If the protocol is not specified, SOCKS version 5 is used. .It Xo .Fl x Ar proxy_address Ns Oo : Ns .Ar port Oc .Xc Requests that .Nm should connect to .Ar destination using a proxy at .Ar proxy_address and .Ar port . If .Ar port is not specified, the well-known port for the proxy protocol is used (1080 for SOCKS, 3128 for HTTPS). .It Fl z Specifies that .Nm should just scan for listening daemons, without sending any data to them. It is an error to use this option in conjunction with the .Fl l option. .El .Pp .Ar destination can be a numerical IP address or a symbolic hostname (unless the .Fl n option is given). In general, a destination must be specified, unless the .Fl l option is given (in which case the local host is used). For .Ux Ns -domain sockets, a destination is required and is the socket path to connect to (or listen on if the .Fl l option is given). .Pp .Ar port can be a single integer or a range of ports. Ranges are in the form nn-mm. In general, a destination port must be specified, unless the .Fl U option is given. .Sh CLIENT/SERVER MODEL It is quite simple to build a very basic client/server model using .Nm . On one console, start .Nm listening on a specific port for a connection. For example: .Pp .Dl $ nc -l 1234 .Pp .Nm is now listening on port 1234 for a connection. On a second console .Pq or a second machine , connect to the machine and port being listened on: .Pp .Dl $ nc 127.0.0.1 1234 .Pp There should now be a connection between the ports. Anything typed at the second console will be concatenated to the first, and vice-versa. After the connection has been set up, .Nm does not really care which side is being used as a .Sq server and which side is being used as a .Sq client . The connection may be terminated using an .Dv EOF .Pq Sq ^D . .Sh DATA TRANSFER The example in the previous section can be expanded to build a basic data transfer model. Any information input into one end of the connection will be output to the other end, and input and output can be easily captured in order to emulate file transfer. .Pp Start by using .Nm to listen on a specific port, with output captured into a file: .Pp .Dl $ nc -l 1234 \*(Gt filename.out .Pp Using a second machine, connect to the listening .Nm process, feeding it the file which is to be transferred: .Pp .Dl $ nc -N host.example.com 1234 \*(Lt filename.in .Pp After the file has been transferred, the connection will close automatically. .Sh TALKING TO SERVERS It is sometimes useful to talk to servers .Dq by hand rather than through a user interface. It can aid in troubleshooting, when it might be necessary to verify what data a server is sending in response to commands issued by the client. For example, to retrieve the home page of a web site: .Bd -literal -offset indent $ printf "GET / HTTP/1.0\er\en\er\en" | nc host.example.com 80 .Ed .Pp Note that this also displays the headers sent by the web server. They can be filtered, using a tool such as .Xr sed 1 , if necessary. .Pp More complicated examples can be built up when the user knows the format of requests required by the server. As another example, an email may be submitted to an SMTP server using: .Bd -literal -offset indent $ nc localhost 25 \*(Lt\*(Lt EOF HELO host.example.com MAIL FROM:\*(Ltuser@host.example.com\*(Gt RCPT TO:\*(Ltuser2@host.example.com\*(Gt DATA Body of email. \&. QUIT EOF .Ed .Sh PORT SCANNING It may be useful to know which ports are open and running services on a target machine. The .Fl z flag can be used to tell .Nm to report open ports, rather than initiate a connection. For example: .Bd -literal -offset indent $ nc -z host.example.com 20-30 Connection to host.example.com 22 port [tcp/ssh] succeeded! Connection to host.example.com 25 port [tcp/smtp] succeeded! .Ed .Pp The port range was specified to limit the search to ports 20 \- 30. .Pp Alternatively, it might be useful to know which server software is running, and which versions. This information is often contained within the greeting banners. In order to retrieve these, it is necessary to first make a connection, and then break the connection when the banner has been retrieved. This can be accomplished by specifying a small timeout with the .Fl w flag, or perhaps by issuing a .Qq Dv QUIT command to the server: .Bd -literal -offset indent $ echo "QUIT" | nc host.example.com 20-30 SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.6.1p2 Protocol mismatch. 220 host.example.com IMS SMTP Receiver Version 0.84 Ready .Ed .Sh EXAMPLES Open a TCP connection to port 42 of host.example.com, using port 31337 as the source port, with a timeout of 5 seconds: .Pp .Dl $ nc -p 31337 -w 5 host.example.com 42 .Pp Open a UDP connection to port 53 of host.example.com: .Pp .Dl $ nc -u host.example.com 53 .Pp Open a TCP connection to port 42 of host.example.com using 10.1.2.3 as the IP for the local end of the connection: .Pp .Dl $ nc -s 10.1.2.3 host.example.com 42 .Pp Open a TCP connection to port 42 of host.example.com using IPsec ESP for incoming and outgoing traffic. .Pp .Dl $ nc -E host.example.com 42 .Pp Open a TCP connection to port 42 of host.example.com using IPsec ESP for outgoing traffic only. .Pp .Dl $ nc -e 'out ipsec esp/transport//require' host.example.com 42 .Pp Create and listen on a .Ux Ns -domain stream socket: .Pp .Dl $ nc -lU /var/tmp/dsocket .Pp Connect to port 42 of host.example.com via an HTTP proxy at 10.2.3.4, port 8080. This example could also be used by .Xr ssh 1 ; see the .Cm ProxyCommand directive in .Xr ssh_config 5 for more information. .Pp .Dl $ nc -x10.2.3.4:8080 -Xconnect host.example.com 42 .Pp The same example again, this time enabling proxy authentication with username .Dq ruser if the proxy requires it: .Pp .Dl $ nc -x10.2.3.4:8080 -Xconnect -Pruser host.example.com 42 .Sh EXIT STATUS .Ex -std .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr cat 1 , .Xr setfib 1 , .Xr ssh 1 , .Xr tcp 4 .Sh AUTHORS Original implementation by *Hobbit* .Aq Mt hobbit@avian.org . .br Rewritten with IPv6 support by .An Eric Jackson Aq Mt ericj@monkey.org . .Sh CAVEATS UDP port scans using the .Fl uz combination of flags will always report success irrespective of the target machine's state. However, in conjunction with a traffic sniffer either on the target machine or an intermediary device, the .Fl uz combination could be useful for communications diagnostics. Note that the amount of UDP traffic generated may be limited either due to hardware resources and/or configuration settings.