How to connect to services

Note

While service challenges are often connected to with netcat or PuTTY, solving them will sometimes require using a scripting language like Python. CTF players often use Python alongside pwntools.

You can run pwntools right in your browser by using repl.it.

Using netcat

netcat is a networking utility found on macOS and linux operating systems and allows for easy connections to CTF challenges. Service challenges will commonly give you an address and a port to connect to. The syntax for connecting to a service challenge with netcat is nc <ip> <port>.

Using ConEmu

Windows users can connect to service challenges using ConEmu, which can be downloaded here. Connecting to service challenges with ConEmu is done by running nc <ip> <port>.