IOScat - a Port of Netcat's TCP functions to Cisco IOS

The motivation for writing IOScat was, as in many projects, a customer requirement - necessity really is the mother of invention.. During a penetration test, it became apparent that having Netcat functions available on a Cisco IOS platform would be extremely useful in furthering the goals of the engagement. Again, as in many cases, this functions in IOScat were initially delivered in a series of small code snips, which after the engagement were consolidated and formalized to create a single tool, delivering most of the TCP functions of Netcat in one package. IOScat is this tool, and is presented in detail in this paper.