retcat

A simple netcat implementation in Rust, providing TCP and UDP networking capabilities for data transfer and network communication.

Features

• TCP Client/Server: Connect to or listen for TCP connections
• UDP Client/Server: Send/receive UDP packets
• Bidirectional Data Transfer: Full-duplex communication between stdin/stdout and network
• Cross-platform: Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows

Installation

From Source

git clone [retcat](https://github.com/hamkee-dev-group/retract)
cd retcat
cargo build --release

The binary will be available at target/release/retcat.

Usage

TCP Server (Listen Mode)

# Listen on port 8080
retcat -l -p 8080

# Listen on specific port
retcat -l -p 1234

TCP Client

# Connect to localhost:8080
retcat localhost 8080

# Connect to remote host
retcat example.com 80

UDP Server

# Listen for UDP packets on port 8080
retcat -l -u -p 8080

UDP Client

# Send UDP packets to localhost:8080
retcat -u localhost 8080

Options

• -l, --listen: Listen mode, for inbound connections
• -p, --port PORT: Local port number
• -u, --udp: Use UDP instead of TCP
• -h, --help: Show help message
• -V, --version: Show version information

Examples

File Transfer

Sender (server):

retcat -l -p 8080 < file.txt

Receiver (client):

retcat localhost 8080 > received_file.txt

Chat Between Two Machines

Machine 1:

retcat -l -p 8080

Machine 2:

retcat machine1-ip 8080

Port Scanning

retcat -u target-host 53  # Test UDP port
retcat target-host 80     # Test TCP port

Development

Building

cargo build          # Debug build
cargo build --release # Release build

Testing

cargo test

Linting

cargo clippy

Dependencies

• clap - Command line argument parsing
• tokio - Async runtime

License

This project is open source. See the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.