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This stores files for two weeks on a third-party server. What advantages for the intended use cases does transfer.sh have over netcat invented 26 years ago? I

by IncRnd 5y ago

This stores files for two weeks on a third-party server. What advantages for the intended use cases does transfer.sh have over netcat invented 26 years ago? I know some people who have used nc for those entire 26 years to xfer files point-to-point from the command line.

capableweb 5y ago
Not sure if your comment is just a re-hash of the now famous HN comment on the Dropbox Show HN ("Why can't you just use rsync/scp"), but netcat which is a unix utility shares basically nothing with transfer.sh which is a web based file sharing application. Comparing them is really apples-to-houses. Netcat has it's uses, but one of them is not guiding your friends and/or family through a terminal in order for them to receive some photos you took last summer vacation.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  What I asked about was the intended use cases, considering transfer.sh and nc. What you mentioned is not one of the many listed use cases. Most of them are to transfer a .txt file.
kim0 5y ago
Guess mostly nat penetration and storage for a few days
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
Netcat is seriously awesome, and still exists very much under the radar of a lot of people. I've used to to copy files around the planet, the datacenter, and the lab. It excels at doing things "right now". If I have a terminal window open on a server in France and one in the US; then I can easily move that file. However, If I have to move my body to the target location before I can copy the file it doesn't work as well. (Need to jump through a few other hoops that make it more challenging.) Protip: ALWAYS grab the hash of the file before you send it, and compare. 2nd Protip: Encrypt your file(s) before you send them. Something like this is decent for moving a file at your leisure, or to give a copy to somebody else at their leisure.
- nick__m 5y ago
  I would like to know if there are any advantages to use nc instead of scp ?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Most obviously, the same things as its disadvantages:) With nc, you don't have encryption or authentication, which is good - faster, no keys to set up, no fingerprints to accept - and terrible - no transport encryption, no data integrity verification, no access control except for at the network layer. Also, slight difference in how you use them: scp operates on files, nc on streams. But you can just pipe over SSH, so that's not a big difference IMO.
  - UI_at_80x24 5y ago
    You don't need an account on the target system. Target PC opens a port and starts listening (outputting to file) Sending machine establishes a connection to the listening port, and starts copying the file. Example (hide a file transfer as DNS traffic) Listening computer: nc -l -u -p 53 > output.file Sending computer: cat original.file > nc -u [destination ip address] 53 In this case you'd be dumb not to encrypt the file before transit. And as I mentioned already make sure you have a hash of the original. You can also use TCP. These are sneaky/simple ways to move files around. Downside: You need to poke a hole in a firewall, but options exist for that too. ssh/scp downside: You need an account on target PC to connect to. nc downside: you need an open port on the listening PC.
    - ducktective 5y ago
      Thanks! - Your 'sending' snippet should use | instead of >. - ports 1-1023 are privileged.
      - UI_at_80x24 5y ago
        Oops, you're right about the pipe.. I thought that looked a bit wrong, but ignored my gut. Privileged port: I'm root anyway. =) I can't make it too easy on these kids.
kokx 5y ago
I have literally done this once with a friend of mine, transfer a file over netcat. It cost us about 10 minutes of figuring out the exact commands, and we were at the same LAN party, and thus had a direct network path to each others systems. With most consumer routers and their NAT this would be much more complicated. And this was with a friend with high unix knowledge, so not just the "I know how to paste commands from askubuntu" knowledge. So yeah, just being able to copy curl commands from a website certainly has value over configuring complicated commands.

by IncRnd 5y ago

capableweb 5y ago

Not sure if your comment is just a re-hash of the now famous HN comment on the Dropbox Show HN ("Why can't you just use rsync/scp"), but netcat which is a unix utility shares basically nothing with transfer.sh which is a web based file sharing application. Comparing them is really apples-to-houses. Netcat has it's uses, but one of them is not guiding your friends and/or family through a terminal in order for them to receive some photos you took last summer vacation.

IncRnd 5y ago
What I asked about was the intended use cases, considering transfer.sh and nc. What you mentioned is not one of the many listed use cases. Most of them are to transfer a .txt file.

kim0 5y ago

Guess mostly nat penetration and storage for a few days

UI_at_80x24 5y ago

Netcat is seriously awesome, and still exists very much under the radar of a lot of people. I've used to to copy files around the planet, the datacenter, and the lab. It excels at doing things "right now". If I have a terminal window open on a server in France and one in the US; then I can easily move that file. However, If I have to move my body to the target location before I can copy the file it doesn't work as well. (Need to jump through a few other hoops that make it more challenging.) Protip: ALWAYS grab the hash of the file before you send it, and compare. 2nd Protip: Encrypt your file(s) before you send them. Something like this is decent for moving a file at your leisure, or to give a copy to somebody else at their leisure.

nick__m 5y ago
I would like to know if there are any advantages to use nc instead of scp ?
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Most obviously, the same things as its disadvantages:) With nc, you don't have encryption or authentication, which is good - faster, no keys to set up, no fingerprints to accept - and terrible - no transport encryption, no data integrity verification, no access control except for at the network layer. Also, slight difference in how you use them: scp operates on files, nc on streams. But you can just pipe over SSH, so that's not a big difference IMO.
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  You don't need an account on the target system. Target PC opens a port and starts listening (outputting to file) Sending machine establishes a connection to the listening port, and starts copying the file. Example (hide a file transfer as DNS traffic) Listening computer: nc -l -u -p 53 > output.file Sending computer: cat original.file > nc -u [destination ip address] 53 In this case you'd be dumb not to encrypt the file before transit. And as I mentioned already make sure you have a hash of the original. You can also use TCP. These are sneaky/simple ways to move files around. Downside: You need to poke a hole in a firewall, but options exist for that too. ssh/scp downside: You need an account on target PC to connect to. nc downside: you need an open port on the listening PC.
  - ducktective 5y ago
    Thanks! - Your 'sending' snippet should use | instead of >. - ports 1-1023 are privileged.
    - UI_at_80x24 5y ago
      Oops, you're right about the pipe.. I thought that looked a bit wrong, but ignored my gut. Privileged port: I'm root anyway. =) I can't make it too easy on these kids.

kokx 5y ago

I have literally done this once with a friend of mine, transfer a file over netcat. It cost us about 10 minutes of figuring out the exact commands, and we were at the same LAN party, and thus had a direct network path to each others systems. With most consumer routers and their NAT this would be much more complicated. And this was with a friend with high unix knowledge, so not just the "I know how to paste commands from askubuntu" knowledge. So yeah, just being able to copy curl commands from a website certainly has value over configuring complicated commands.