NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) #

At a Glance #

Default Ports

NNTP: 119
NNTPS (NNTPS over TLS): 563
NNSP (server-server bulk transfer): 433

NNTP is an application-layer protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles between news servers. Client applications can also inquire, retrieve, and post articles.

Telnet #

telnet 10.0.0.3 119

Netcat #

nc -n 10.0.0.3 119

openssl ¹ #

openssl s_client -crlf -connect 10.0.0.3:563

Parameters

s_client: SSL/TLS client program.
-crlf: translate a line feed from the terminal into CR+LF.

Commands #

Various commands allow clients to retrieve, send, and post articles. The difference between send and post is that the latter involves articles with incomplete header information.

NNTP also provides active and passive news transfer, or “pushing” and “pulling” respectively. When pushing, the client offers an article through IHAVE <message_id>. When pulling, the client requests a list of available articles for the specified date through NEWNEWS <YYMMDD> <HHMMSS>.

Several commands also allow clients to retrieve the article header and body separately, or even single header lines from a range of articles. ²

Note: NNTP commands responses always end with a period (.) on a line by itself.

CAPABILITIES            List server capabilities.
HELP                    Show available commands.
MODE READER             Use Reader mode. Reader mode uses a lot of commands, use HELP.
LIST                    List groups.
SELECT <group>          Select group.
LISTGROUP <group>       List article in a group.
HEAD <article_id>       Retrieve article header.
BODY <article_id>       Retrieve article body.
ARTICLE <article_id>    Retrieve article.
POST                    Post article.

NNTP Exploits Search #

Refer to Exploits Search

OpenSSL Foundation, Inc. “/Docs/Manmaster/Man1/Openssl.Html.” OpenSSL.Org, https://www.openssl.org/docs/manmaster/man1/openssl.html. ↩︎
“22. NNTP and the Nntpd Daemon - Linux Network Administrator’s Guide, Second Edition [Book].” O’Reilly Online Learning, O’Reilly Media, Inc., https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/linux-network-administrators/1565924002/ch22.html. ↩︎