ncat's nsock vs. nmap nsock

[" mixter () gmail com" <mixter () gmail com>]

Hi,

Currently, I'm working for Fyodor and GSoC on improving and
eventually merging ncat (the nmap netcat implementation) with
the main distribution. It currently resides in nmap-ext/ncat.

The main issue that prevents it from merging is that the nsock
version of ncat is a slightly modified version of the original nsock.
By diff'ing the 2006 nsock version against it (attached), I found
there's just one major difference, which is in do_actual_read():

- buflen = read(iod->sd, buf, sizeof(buf));
+ buflen = recv(iod->sd, buf, sizeof(buf), 0);

Ncat does a read() which is fully reliable, but nsock originally does a
recv() (which just differently, e.g. it is slightly lower level and more
errors have to be catched). The Bad News, Ncat, as designed, does
NOT work with a recv() in this place (doesn't receive any input), but
Good News: it DOES fully work with latest nsock from nmap CVS with
only a read() in place of the recv() (all features tested & working).

Without touching the original nsock implementation, which I
certainly don't want to, the straightforward solution I see would
be to clone a few functions from nsock_core.c in ncat which use
this low-level read: do_actual_read()  handle_read_result()
iterate_through_event_lists() and  nsock_loop(). That should be all.

Unless anyone comes up with a more beautiful solution, I would do
this (only) to the Ncat code, probably on the weekend, resulting in a
nmap-exp/ncat directory that produces a working ncat with externals
set to current nsock/nbase implementations. Other suggestions welcome
(and ideally, that should not be a full Ncat core rewrite, as I just have 2-3
months for adding a bunch of features within the GSoC project ;)

bye,
Mixter

Attachment: nsock.diff.txt
Description:

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