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netcat

TCP/IP swiss army knife

uncategorizedRed Team
Official docs ↗Download ↗Source repo ↗

Platforms: Linux · Last verified September 6, 2026

A simple Unix utility which reads and writes data across network connections using TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable “back-end” tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities.

Only use this tool against systems you own or are explicitly authorized to test — see the disclaimer.

Getting started

See the official Kali tool page and upstream homepage linked above for installation and usage details.

Commonly preinstalled on

Kali Linux

Debian-based distribution built for penetration testing and security auditing