WinSocat

WinSocat is a socat-like program specific on Windows platform. It can bridge Windows named pipe and other general I/O, e.g., STDIO, TCP, the STDIO of Process.

Installation

There are several ways to install WinSocat.

.NET CLI

Install .NET 6 or newer and install via dotnet tool

dotnet tool install -g winsocat

Windows Package Manager

Install via winget

winget install -e --id Firejox.WinSocat

Command Form

The WinSocat is accept two address pattern

winsocat.exe [address1] [address2]

The address1 can accept STDIO, TCP-LISTEN, TCP, NPIPE, NPIPE-LISTEN, EXEC, WSL, UNIX, UNIX-LISTEN, HVSOCK, HVSOCK-LISTEN, SP socket types.

The address2 can accept STDIO, TCP, NPIPE, EXEC, WSL, UNIX, HVSOCK, SP socket types.

Examples

• It can bridge standard input/output and tcp connection to address 127.0.0.1 on port 80.

winsocat STDIO TCP:127.0.0.1:80

• It can forward from Windows named pipe to remote tcp socket.

winsocat NPIPE-LISTEN:myPipe TCP:127.0.0.1:80

• It can use Windows named pipe for network connection

winsocat NPIPE:RemoteServer:RemotePipe STDIO

• It can create reverse shell.

winsocat EXEC:C:\Windows\syetem32\cmd.exe TCP:127.0.0.1:8000

• It can bridge Windows named pipe and unix socket on Windows

winsocat NPIPE-LISTEN:fooPipe UNIX:foo.sock

Interact with WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linux)

WinSocat provide the syntax sugar for WSL program. Hence, this example

winsocat STDIO WSL:cat,distribution=Ubuntu,user=root

would be equivalent to

winsocat STDIO EXEC:"C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe -d Ubuntu -u root cat"

if wsl.exe is located on C:\Windows\System32.

The distribution and user are optional parameters. If these parameters are not specified, it will run with the default options. You can combine the socat of WSL distribution for the communication between WSL and Windows Host.

• Windows named pipe forwarding to WSL Unix Socket

winsocat NPIPE-LISTEN:fooPipe WSL:"socat STDIO unix-connect:foo.sock"

• WSL Unix Socket forwarding to Windows named pipe

socat unix-listen:foo.sock,fork EXEC:"/path/to/winsocat.exe STDIO NPIPE:fooPipe"

HyperV Socket Support

WinSocat is also allow to interact with hyper-v socket. It requires the vmId and serviceId to connect. For example, you can use this

winsocat stdio hvsock:0cb41c0b-fd26-4a41-8370-dccb048e216e:00000ac9-facb-11e6-bd58-64006a7986d3

to connect the VSOCK socket opened by WSL2 program. This program is running under the HyperV-VM with vmId 0cb41c0b-fd26-4a41-8370-dccb048e216e. And it opens the VSOCK port 2761(the hex format is 0x00000ac9). According to hyper-v on windows, the VSOCK port on Linux will be equivalent to the serviceId [port in hex]-facb-11e6-bd58-64006a7986d3 on windows. Hence, WinSocat provide the short representation for VSOCK.

winsocat stdio hvsock:0cb41c0b-fd26-4a41-8370-dccb048e216e:vsock-2761

This vsock-2761 will be viewed as the serviceId 00000ac9-facb-11e6-bd58-64006a7986d3.

Serial Port Support

WinSocat can relay the data of serial port. For example,

winsocat sp:COM1,baudrate=12500,parity=1,databits=16,stopbits=0 stdio

The baudrate, parity, databits and stopbits is optional parameter. Another example is to integrate with com0com.

1. Assume you have already created paired com port COM5 <=> COM6 via com0com.
2. Execute the command at terminal

winsocat sp:COM5 stdio

3. Execute the command at another terminal

winsocat sp:COM6 stdio

Now these two terminals can interact with each other.