• Added two new options:
  • -w (adds a timeout option which significantly speeds up port/ping scans
  • -r (without this flag, reverse dns lookups will not be attempted)
• Debugged rare deadlocks
• Revamped options parsing
• Added virtual terminal sequences support
  • Example: wc towel.blinkenlights.nl 23

⚠️ PLEASE NOTE: This binary will most likely get flagged and auto-removed by Windows Defender when unzipping the files. If so, you will need to add an exception into Windows Defender for this. The reason Windows Defender thinks this tool is malicious is pretty obvious with the most notable being the unsafe use of exec e.g. the -e option which pipes program input/output over a network socket.

Project name change.

Code was cleaned up a bit to remove any possible memory leaks. When transferring data, all connections close as soon as EOF is reached on either side or as soon as one side of the connection closes. On Windows, EOF can be sent to the command line with (Ctrl+Z).

I've tested transferring extremely large pictures (~4 GiB) between my machine using TomCat and another machine using a "real/modern" version of NetCat over my local network going both ways, and the data matched perfectly byte-for-byte. I do not recommend scanning more than 200 ports at a time, as it can be painfully slow since is uses the Connect() call. Also, be careful when using CIDR notation with the ping scanner as it technically allows you to "attempt" to scan the entire IPv4 space. DON'T DO THAT!

This was only meant to be an educational project for myself but I end up using this little tool all the time for simple network debugging at home (i.e. for setting up LAN parties, seeing what other devices are on the network, or testing if a port is properly forwarded/open etc.)

Type "tomcat -h" to display the help page.

Please feel free to report any bugs or leave suggestions.

Enjoy!

Here's a nice lightweight release. I have gone into great effort to make sure this program functions as consistently as possible with the traditional NetCat. When transferring data, all connections close as soon as EOF is reached on either side. OpenMP multi-threading is used to speed up port and ping scans.

Type "tomcat -h" to display the help page.