socat
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 24 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
People recommend socat as a low-hassle command-line relay and a better alternative to base telnet for ad-hoc connections. One critic found it slow.
People recommend socat as a low-hassle command-line relay and a better alternative to base telnet for ad-hoc connections. One critic found it slow.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 94%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 15 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Better than base telnet
“the ones above are basically far better direct telnet alternatives”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “The Day the Telnet Died” “Netcat or socat, both of which are far better than base Telnet”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “The Day the Telnet Died” Good ad-hoc network client
“netcat or socat make fine ad-hoc clients”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “The Day the Telnet Died” “You want nc (usually with -v) or socat.”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “The Day the Telnet Died”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
12 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I used it to wrap up some socat and curl. Ugly stuff.”
“socat will definitely be faster”
“the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it”
“What these offer is tried and tested secure code for client side needs, clear options and you don't need to hand roll code for.”
“netcat or socat make fine ad-hoc clients”
“the ones above are basically far better direct telnet alternatives”
“Netcat or socat, both of which are far better than base Telnet”
“You want nc (usually with -v) or socat.”
“I am using socat right now to achieve this translation but it is rather slow”
“I personally would just do it in userspace, especially for that simple of a use.”
“I've had the least hassle with socat”
“You can set up a 'socat' process to listen on a certain IPv6 address and relay traffic to GitHub”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.