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8 NETCAT (NC) COMMAND WITH EXAMPLES

Aaron KiliAugust 5, 2019August 9, 2019 Categories Linux Commands 5 Comments

Netcat (or nc in short) is a simple yet powerful networking command-line tool
used for performing any operation in Linux related to TCP, UDP, or UNIX-domain
sockets.

Netcat can be used for port scanning, port redirection, as a port listener (for
incoming connections); it can also be used to open remote connections and so
many other things. Besides, you can use it as a backdoor to gain access to a
target server.

In this article, we will explain Netcat usage commands with examples.

HOW TO INSTALL AND USE NETCAT IN LINUX

To install the netcat package on your system, use the default package manager
for your Linux distribution.

$ yum install nc [On CentOS/RHEL]
$ dnf install nc [On Fedora 22+ and RHEL 8]
$ sudo apt-get install Netcat [On Debian/Ubuntu]

Once netcat package installed, you can proceed further to learn the usage of
netcat command in the following examples.

PORT SCANNING

Netcat can be used for port scanning: to know which ports are open and running
services on a target machine. It can scan a single or multiple or a range of
open ports.

Here is an example, the -z option sets nc to simply scan for listening daemons,
without actually sending any data to them. The -v option enables verbose mode
and -w specifies a timeout for connection that can not be established.

$ nc -v -w 2 z 192.168.56.1 22 #scan a single port
OR
$ nc -v -w 2 z 192.168.56.1 22 80 #scan multiple ports
OR
$ nc -v -w 2 z 192.168.56.1 20-25 #scan range of ports

Scan for Open Ports in Linux

TRANSFER FILES BETWEEN LINUX SERVERS

Netcat allows you to transfer files between two Linux computers or servers and
both these systems must have nc installed.

For example, to copy an ISO image file from one computer to another and monitor
the transfer progress (using the pv utility), run the following command on the
sender/server computer (where the ISO file exists).

This will run nc in listening mode (-l flag) on port 3000.

$ tar -zcf - debian-10.0.0-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso | pv | nc -l -p 3000 -q 5

And on the receiver/client computer, run the following command to obtain the
file.

$ nc 192.168.1.4 3000 | pv | tar -zxf -

File Transfer Between Linux Systems

CREATE A COMMAND LINE CHAT SERVER

You can also use Netcat to create a simple command-line messaging server
instantly. As in the previous usage example, nc must be installed on both
systems used for the chat room.

On one system, run the following command to create the chat server listening on
port 5000.

$ nc -l -vv -p 5000

On the other system, run the following command to launch a chat session to a
machine where the messaging server is running.

$ nc 192.168.56.1 5000

Create Chat Server in Command Line

CREATE A BASIC WEB SERVER

Wit the -l option of nc command used to create a basic, insecure web server to
serve static web files for learning purposes. To demonstrate this, create a
.html file as shown.

$ vim index.html

Add the following HTML lines in the file.

<html>
<head>
<title>Test Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Serving this file using Netcat Basic HTTP server!</p>
</body>
</html>

Save changes in the file and exit.

Then serve the above file over HTTP by running the following command, which will
enables the HTTP server to run continuously.

$ while : ; do ( echo -ne "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n" ; cat index.html; ) | nc -l -p 8080 ; done

Create Web server in Command line

Then open a web browser and can access the content using the following address.

http://localhost:8080
OR
http://SERVER_IP:8080

Test Web Server

Note that you can to stop the Netcat HTTP server by pressing [Ctrl+ C].

TROUBLESHOOT LINUX SERVER CONNECTION

Another useful usage of Netcat is to troubleshoot server connection issues.
Here, you can use Netcat to verify what data a server is sending in response to
commands issued by the client.

The following command retrieves the home page of example.com.

$ printf "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n" | nc text.example.com 80

The output of the above command includes the headers sent by the web-server
which can be used for troubleshooting purposes.

FIND A SERVICE RUNNING ON PORT

You can also use Netcat to obtain port banners. In this case, it will tell you
what service is running behind a certain port. For example to know what type of
service is running behind port 22 on a specific server, run the following
command (replace 192.168.56.110 with the target server’s IP address). The -n
flag means to disable DNS or service lookups.

$ nc -v -n 192.168.56.110 80

Find Service Running on Port

CREATE A STREAM SOCKETS

Netcat also supports creation of UNIX-domain stream sockets. The following
command will create and listen on a UNIX-domain stream socket.

$ nc -lU /var/tmp/mysocket &
$ ss -lpn | grep "/var/tmp/"

Create Stream Socket in Command Line

CREATE A BACKDOOR

You can as well run Netcat as a backdoor. However, this calls for more work. If
Netcat is installed on a target server, you can use it to create a backdoor, to
get a remote command prompt.

To act a backdoor you need Netcat to listen on a chosen port (e.g port 3001) on
the target server and then you can connect to this port from your machine as
follows.

This is the command intended to run on the remote server where the -d option
disables reading from stdin, and -e specifies the command to run on the target
system.

$ nc -L -p 3001 -d -e cmd.exe

Last but not least, Netcat can be used as a proxy for different
services/protocols including HTTP, SSH, and many more. For more information, see
its man page.

$ man nc

In this article, we have explained 8 practical Netcat command usage examples. If
you know any other practical use case(s), share with us via the feedback form
below. You can ask a question as well.

Tags nc command examples, netcat command examples
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5 THOUGHTS ON “8 NETCAT (NC) COMMAND WITH EXAMPLES”

1. Rakshith
June 20, 2022 at 3:17 pm

The package name is not `Netcat`, its `netcat`.

2. Siva
December 16, 2020 at 10:52 pm

nc is failing for multiple ports & range

$ nc -v -w 2 -z 10.244.169.10 1 2
Ncat: Version 7.50 ( https://nmap.org/ncat )
Ncat: Got more than one port specification: 1 2. QUITTING.

3. Vedant Pareek
July 13, 2020 at 4:29 pm

In the first example, you should make it -z rather than z.

Thanks

4. Jared
August 10, 2019 at 11:35 am

You can pair netcat with tcpdump to stream a packet capture to another host.
This is useful for capturing in real time traffic on busybox or other small
Linux distributions.

I have had luck using tcpdump for android on busybox running a security
camera.

Reply
* Aaron Kili
August 19, 2019 at 2:44 pm

@Jared

Great, I will do more research on this and practically test it. Many
thanks for sharing.

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