NC(1)

📦
version 1.238 · 4 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 NC(1) — General Commands Manual 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because this is nc — section 1 of the General Commands Manual — aka netcat, aka the little utility that does literally everything 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

nc — arbitrary TCP and UDP connections and listens 👑

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

nc [-46bCDdFhklNnrStUuvZz] [-I length] [-i interval] [-M ttl]
   [-m minttl] [-O length] [-P proxy_username] [-p source_port]
   [-q seconds] [-s sourceaddr] [-T keyword] [-V rtable] [-W recvlimit]
   [-w timeout] [-X proxy_protocol] [-x proxy_address[:port]]
   [destination] [port]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so the nc (or netcat) utility? it's used for just about anything under the sun involving TCP, UDP, or Unix-domain sockets. like, anything. it can:

  • open TCP connections 🔌
  • send UDP packets 📦
  • listen on arbitrary TCP and UDP ports 👂
  • do port scanning 🔍
  • deal with both IPv4 and IPv6 🌈

and unlike telnet(1) — no shade, but — nc scripts nicely, and it puts its error messages on standard error instead of dumping them into standard output the way telnet(1) does with some. it's giving ✨well-behaved✨.

Common uses include:

  • simple TCP proxies
  • shell-script based HTTP clients and servers
  • network daemon testing
  • a SOCKS or HTTP ProxyCommand for ssh(1)
  • and much, much more 💅

okay so here is every single option, no skips, no gatekeeping, fr fr:

  • -4 — Use IPv4 addresses only. 4️⃣
  • -6 — Use IPv6 addresses only. 6️⃣
  • -b — Allow broadcast. 📡
  • -C — Send CRLF as line-ending. every single line feed (LF) character coming from the input data gets translated into CR+LF before it's written to the socket. but! line feed characters that are already preceded with a carriage return (CR) are not translated. and received data is not affected at all. 🤝
  • -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 so nc can do the 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. on Linux, if the name starts with an at symbol (@) it is read as an abstract namespace socket: the leading @ is replaced with a NUL byte before binding or connecting. for details, see unix(7). 🐧
  • -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), 4A (SOCKS v.4A), 5 (SOCKS v.5) and connect (HTTPS proxy). if the protocol is not specified, SOCKS version 5 is used. note that the SOCKS v.4 protocol is very limited and can only be used when the destination host can be resolved to an IPv4 address. the other protocols pass the destination as a string to be interpreted by the remote proxy and do not have this limitation. 🧦
  • -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. 🔎

destination can be a numerical IP address or a symbolic hostname (unless the -n option is given). in general, a destination must be specified, unless the -l option is given (in which case the local host is used). for Unix-domain sockets, a destination is required and is the socket path to connect to (or listen on if the -l option is given). 🛰️

port can be specified as a numeric port number or as a service name. port ranges may be specified as numeric port numbers of the form nn-mm. in general, a destination port must be specified, unless the -U option is given. for some options, the value 0 requests that the system choose a port number. 🔢

🧚 CLIENT/SERVER MODEL 🧚

building a very basic client/server model with nc is quite simple, bestie. on one console, start nc listening on a specific port for a connection. for example:

$ nc -l 1234

nc is now listening on port 1234 for a connection. on a second console (or a second machine), connect to the machine and port being listened on:

$ nc -N 127.0.0.1 1234

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, nc does not really care which side is being used as a ‘server’ and which side is being used as a ‘client’. the connection may be terminated using an EOF (‘^D’), as the -N flag was given. 🫶

there is no -c or -e option in this netcat, but you still can execute a command after connection being established by redirecting file descriptors. Be cautious here because opening a port and let anyone connected execute arbitrary command on your site is DANGEROUS. 💀 if you really need to do this, here is an example:

On ‘server’ side:

$ rm -f /tmp/f; mkfifo /tmp/f
$ cat /tmp/f | /bin/sh -i 2>&1 | nc -l 127.0.0.1 1234 > /tmp/f

On ‘client’ side:

$ nc host.example.com 1234
$ (shell prompt from host.example.com)

by doing this, you create a fifo at /tmp/f and make nc listen at port 1234 of address 127.0.0.1 on ‘server’ side. when a ‘client’ establishes a connection successfully to that port, /bin/sh gets executed on ‘server’ side and the shell prompt is given to ‘client’ side. 👑

when connection is terminated, nc quits as well. use -k if you want it keep listening, but if the command quits this option won't restart it or keep nc running. also don't forget to remove the file descriptor once you don't need it anymore:

$ rm -f /tmp/f

🌈 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. 📁✨

start by using nc to listen on a specific port, with output captured into a file:

$ nc -l 1234 > filename.out

using a second machine, connect to the listening nc process, feeding it the file which is to be transferred:

$ nc -N host.example.com 1234 < filename.in

after the file has been transferred, the connection will close automatically. 🦋

🗣️ TALKING TO SERVERS ✨

okay so sometimes you don't wanna use a whole fancy UI, you just wanna talk to the server by hand 💅 and that's so valid. It's a total lifesaver for troubleshooting, when you gotta verify exactly what data a server is sending back in response to the commands your client issued. Like, bestie, sometimes you just need the receipts 🔍

For example, to grab the home page of a web site:

$ printf "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n" | nc host.example.com 80
heads up bestie 🫶 this also shows you the headers the web server sent back. You can filter those out with a tool like sed(1) if you don't want them. no cap.

And once you know the format of the requests a server wants, you can build up way more complicated examples. Like, as another example, an email may be submitted to an SMTP server using:

$ nc [-C] localhost 25 << EOF
HELO host.example.com
MAIL FROM:<user@host.example.com>
RCPT TO:<user2@host.example.com>
DATA
Body of email.
.
QUIT
EOF

🔎 PORT SCANNING 👑

Sometimes you just gotta know which ports are open and running services on a target machine, and honestly? relatable. The -z flag tells nc to report open ports instead of actually initiating a connection. Usually it's useful to turn on verbose output to stderr by using this option together with the -v option. So like, -zv is the iconic duo 💖

For example:

$ nc -zv 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!

The port range was specified to limit the search to ports 20 - 30, and it gets scanned in increasing order (unless the -r flag is set). 🔥

You can also just specify a list of ports to scan, for example:

$ nc -zv host.example.com http 20 22-23
nc: connect to host.example.com 80 (tcp) failed: Connection refused
nc: connect to host.example.com 20 (tcp) failed: Connection refused
Connection to host.example.com port [tcp/ssh] succeeded!
nc: connect to host.example.com 23 (tcp) failed: Connection refused

The ports are scanned in the order you gave them (unless the -r flag is set). periodt. 💅

Alternatively, it might be useful to know which server software is running, and which versions. This info is often chillin' inside the greeting banners 🎀 In order to retrieve those, you gotta first make a connection, and then break the connection once the banner has been retrieved. You can do this by specifying a small timeout with the -w flag, or maybe by sending a "QUIT" command to the server:

$ 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

🌈 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:

$ nc -p 31337 -w 5 host.example.com 42

Open a UDP connection to port 53 of host.example.com:

$ nc -u host.example.com 53

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:

$ nc -s 10.1.2.3 host.example.com 42

Create and listen on a Unix-domain stream socket:

$ nc -lU /var/tmp/dsocket

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 ssh(1); see the ProxyCommand directive in ssh_config(5) for more info 👀

$ nc -x10.2.3.4:8080 -Xconnect host.example.com 42

The same example again, but this time enabling proxy authentication with username "ruser" if the proxy requires it:

$ nc -x10.2.3.4:8080 -Xconnect -Pruser host.example.com 42

👀 SEE ALSO ✨

cat(1), ssh(1)

🫶 AUTHORS 💜

  • Original implementation by Hobbit <hobbit@avian.org>.
  • Rewritten with IPv6 support by Eric Jackson <ericj@monkey.org>.
  • Modified for Debian port by Aron Xu ⟨aron@debian.org⟩.

⚠️ CAVEATS 💀

UDP port scans using the -uz combination of flags will always report success no matter what state the target machine is actually in. 😭 like it's lying to you, bestie.

However — and this is the plot twist — in conjunction with a traffic sniffer either on the target machine or on an intermediary device, the -uz combination could be useful for communications diagnostics. So it's not useless, it's just built different 🧚

Note that the amount of UDP traffic generated may be limited either due to hardware resources and/or configuration settings. 📉

Debian · June 24, 2025 · NC(1)

and that's a wrap bestie, mwah 💋 go forth and nc responsibly, ily, bye 🦋✨🎀

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