Netcat is an application that supports reading from, and writing to, network connections using raw TCP and UDP packets. Unlike packets that are organized by services such as Telnet or FTP, Netcat's packets are not accompanied by headers or other channel information specific to the service. This simplifies communications and allows for an almost-universal communication channel.
The last stable version of Netcat was released by Hobbit in 1996, and it has remained as useful as ever; in fact, it is frequently referred to as the TCP/IP Swiss army knife. Netcat can perform many functions, including the following:
- Port scanning
- Banner grabbing to identify services
- Port redirection and proxying
- File transfer ...
