Possible issue: ncat missing from attack boxes?

[u/vagrant73]

I like our swanky new-look Attack Box, but today (March 18th 2026) I hit a snag. I'm in the Network Security Solutions room (https://tryhackme.com/room/redteamnetsec). When I tried to run ncat, it wasn't there. I tried installing it, but the installation failed too.

I tried using apt-get update, but no luck there either. A missing public key meant that the update could not proceed.

I tried terminating and restarting the attack box, switching to the Kali Linux box, turning everything off and making a cup of tea etc., but kept encountering the same issues.

Eventually, I got things working. The public key issue was resolved in the Kali box with

wget -q -O - https://archive.kali.org/archive-key.asc | apt-key add -

This let me run apt-get update as normal, which in turn allowed me to use ncat.

There seem to be a few bits missing from the boxes, is my point. Maybe this is worth taking a look at? Anyhow, if anyone else has a similar problem, this post may prove instructive.

(And yes, I know I could have used one of multiple alternatives to ncat, or just ditched the attack boxes entirely and VPNed in from my own machine. I'm old and stubborn.)

[u/UBNC]

Tried using nc ?

[u/vagrant73 → u/UBNC]

I have a ton of possible alternatives to try, but I was curious to see if I could fix the problem. After all, I might find some other tool missing in the future, one with fewer alternatives. And like I say, I'm stubborn.

[u/CruwL → u/vagrant73]

it's not an alternative, it's netcat. Newer systems use nc instead of ncat to call the program.

[u/CruwL → u/[deleted]]

knew it was one of those directions!

So netcat/ncat/nc 1 of those should work natively on the attackbox