Which NetCat option specifies the local port to use?

• A. -e
• B. -z
• C. -n
• D. -p

Answer: (D)

You can control the local source port in NetCat with the -p option. This lets you force the port that your outgoing connection will originate from, which is useful when firewall rules or intrusion-detection systems expect traffic from a specific port or when you’re testing how a service responds to connections from a particular source port. For example, to connect to a target on port 80 using local port 4444, you would specify -p 4444 along with the destination and remote port. The other options serve different purposes: -e runs a program after connecting, -z enables zero-I/O mode for scanning, and -n disables DNS resolution.