Nemesis is a command-line network packet crafting and injection utility for UNIX-like and Windows systems. Well suited for testing Network Intrusion Detection Systems, firewalls, IP stacks and a variety of other tasks. As a command-line driven utility, it is perfect for automation and scripting.

Nemesis can natively craft and inject ARP, DNS, ETHERNET, ICMP, IGMP, IP, OSPF, RIP, TCP and UDP packets. Using the IP and the Ethernet injection modes, almost any custom packet can be crafted and injected.

Examples

Send TCP packet (SYN/ACK) with payload from file ‘foo’ to target’s ssh port from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.2.2. (-v allows a stdout visual of current injected packet):

sudo nemesis tcp -v -S 192.168.1.1 -D 192.168.2.2 -fSA -y 22 -P foo

Send UDP packet from 10.11.12.13:11111 to 10.1.1.2’s name-service port with a payload read from a file ‘bindpkt’. (again -v is used in order to see confirmation of our injected packet):

sudo nemesis udp -v -S 10.11.12.13 -D 10.1.1.2 -x 11111 -y 53 -P bindpkt

Send ICMP REDIRECT (network) packet from 10.10.10.3 to 10.10.10.1 with preferred gateway as source address. Here we want no output to go to stdout – which would be ideal as a component in a batch job via a shell script:

sudo nemesis icmp -S 10.10.10.3 -D 10.10.10.1 -G 10.10.10.3 -qR

Send ARP packet through device ne0 (eg. my OpenBSD pcmcia nic) from hardware source address 00:01:02:03:04:05 with IP source address 10.11.30.5 to destination IP address 10.10.15.1 with broadcast destination hardware address. In other words, who-has the mac address of 10.10.15.1, tell 10.11.30.5 – assuming 00:01:02:03:04:05 is the source mac address of our ne0 device:

sudo nemesis arp -v -d ne0 -H 0:1:2:c0:ff:ee -S 10.11.30.5 -D 10.10.15.1

ARP poisoning #1, setup gateway --> me --> victim traffic redirect (poison gateway’s ARP table):

sudo nemesis arp -v -r -d eth0 -S victim -D gateway -h myMAC

ARP poisoning #2, Setup victim --> me --> gateway traffic redirect (poison victim’s ARP table):

sudo nemesis arp -v -r -d eth0 -S gateway -D victim -h myMAC

and more:

sudo nemesis arp -v -S 10.0.0.1 -D 10.0.1.2 -H 0:1:2:3:4:5 -h de:ad:be:ef:0:0 \
    -M 00:60:b0:dc:5c:c0 -m 00:60:b0:dc:5c:c0 -d eth0 -T

sudo nemesis icmp -S 10.10.10.3 -D 10.10.10.1 -G 10.10.10.3 -i 5

IGMP, join a multicast stream (example from Bluewin TV Enviroment):

sudo nemesis igmp -v -p 22 -S 192.168.1.20 -i 239.186.39.5 -D 239.186.39.5

IGMP v2 join for group 239.186.39.5:

sudo nemesis igmp -v -p 22 -S 192.168.1.20 -i 239.186.39.5 -D 239.186.39.5

IGMP v2 query, max resp. time 10 sec, with Router Alert IP option:

echo -ne '\x94\x04\x00\x00' >RA
sudo nemesis igmp -v -p 0x11 -c 100 -D 224.0.0.1 -O RA

or:

echo -ne '\x94\x04\x00\x00' | sudo nemesis igmp -v -p 0x11 -c 100 -D 224.0.0.1 -O -

IGMP v3 query, with Router Alert IP option:

echo -ne '\x03\x64\x00\x00' > v3
sudo nemesis igmp -p 0x11 -c 100 -i 0.0.0.0 -P v3 -D 224.0.0.1 -O RA

DHCP Discover (must use sudo and -d to send with source IP 0.0.0.0):

sudo nemesis dhcp -d eth0

Random TCP packet:

sudo nemesis tcp

DoS and DDoS testing:

sudo nemesis tcp -v -S 192.168.1.1 -D 192.168.2.2 -fSA -y 22 -P foo
sudo nemesis udp -v -S 10.11.12.13 -D 10.1.1.2 -x 11111 -y 53 -P bindpkt
sudo nemesis icmp redirect -S 10.10.10.3 -D 10.10.10.1 -G 10.10.10.3 -qR
sudo nemesis arp -v -d ne0 -H 0:1:2:3:4:5 -S 10.11.30.5 -D 10.10.15.1

Documentation

Origin & References

Originally created by Mark Grimes in 1999, in 2001 Jeff Nathan took over maintainership, in 2005 the project went dark … Now, after more than a decade of inactivity, Joachim Nilsson stepped in, converted it from CVS to GIT and merged the stale libnet-1.1 upgrade branch from 2005.