To: socat@dest-unreach.org
Subject: RE: socat - new multipurpose relay, 1st public release



-----Original Message-----
From: socat@dest-unreach.org [mailto:socat@dest-unreach.org]
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 11:56 AM
To: sectools@securityfocus.com
Subject: socat - new multipurpose relay, 1st public release


Name:      socat
Version:   1.0.2.0 (not completely tested yet, please handle as beta!)
Title:     Multipurpose data relay
License:   GPL
Platforms: UN*X (currently Linux, FreeBSD, AIX, Solaris)
Location:  http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/socat-1.0/
md5sum:    5e0546dfa2707f2eba5e02fa0bc1f8bc


README: 

socat is a relay for bidirectional data transfer between two independent data
channels. Each of these data channels may be a file, pipe, device (terminal or
modem etc.), socket (UNIX, IP4, IP6 - raw, UDP, TCP), a file descriptor (stdin 
etc), a program, or an arbitrary combination of two of these.

socat can be used, e.g., as TCP relay (one-shot or daemon), as an external
socksifier, for attacking weak firewalls, as a shell interface to UNIX sockets,
IP6 relay, as netcat and rinetd replacement, for redirecting TCP oriented
programs like brutus to a serial line, or to establish a relatively secure
environment (su and  chroot) for running client or server shell scripts with
network connections. 

Many options are available to refine socats behaviour:
terminal parameters, open() options, file permissions, file and process owners,
basic socket options like bind address, advanced socket options like IP source
routing, linger, TTL, TOS (type of service), or TCP performance tuning.

More capabilities, like daemon mode with forking, client address check,
"tail -f" mode, some stream data processing (line terminator conversion),
choosing sockets, pipes, or ptys for interprocess communication, debug and
trace options, logging to syslog, stderr or file, and last but not least
precise error messages make it a versatile tool for many different purposes.

In fact, many of these features already exist in spezialized tools; yet, I know
of no other tool that provides such a generic, flexible, simple and almost
comprehensive (UNIX) byte stream connector.

This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License; please see
the file COPYING. 
Except for install-sh, which is copyright MIT, with its own license

For questions, ideas, bug reports etc. please contact socat@dest-unreach.org

For socat source distribution, bug fixes, and latest news see
        http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/


Regards
Gerhard Rieger