🔄 Exchanger (exchangertool)

Exchanger is a fast, lightweight, and flexible Python CLI utility designed to streamline file transfers, payload delivery, and data exchange between machines.

Whether you are a system administrator moving files or a security professional leveraging LOLBAS/GTFOBins during an engagement, exchangertool provides a seamless way to host, transfer, and exfiltrate your data.

✨ Features

• Quick Setup: Spin up a file exchange server in seconds.
• Cross-Platform Target Support: Serves files to Windows (certutil, curl, PowerShell, iwr, bitsadmin, net use) and GNU/Linux (wget, curl, bash) targets.
• Obfuscation (-o): PowerShell-Obfuscation-Bible–style and Bashfuscator-style command obfuscation for authorized testing.
• Basic Auth (--auth): Protect downloads/uploads with HTTP Basic authentication.
• One-Shot Mode (--one-shot): Server exits after completing a single transfer.
• Push Mode (push): Actively push a file to a listening target.
• Base64 Encoding (--encode base64): Auto-encode on push, auto-decode on receive.
• Clipboard Copy (-c): Auto-copy first target command to clipboard.
• QR Code (-q): Display download URL as a QR code for air-gapped transfers.
• Checksum Verification: SHA256 verification commands printed alongside downloads.
• DNS Exfil Commands: Ready-to-use DNS exfiltration stagers for Linux and Windows.
• Chunked Transfer Commands: Split large files into chunks for size-limit evasion.
• WebDAV Commands: Windows net use / copy commands via WebDAV.
• Proxy Support (--proxy): Generate proxy-aware target commands (SOCKS5/HTTP).
• Request Logging (--log): Log all requests to a file (timestamp, IP, method, path, user-agent).
• Auto-Rename: Uploads never overwrite — collisions auto-rename to file.1, file.2, etc.
• SMB Serve (--protocol smb): Serve files over SMB using impacket (optional).
• Standalone CLI: Runs smoothly from any terminal.
• Isolated Installation: Compatible with pipx.

📦 Installation

pipx install exchangertool

Optional extras

# QR code support
pipx install exchangertool[qr]

# SMB support (requires impacket)
pipx install exchangertool[smb]

# Everything
pipx install exchangertool[all]

Using with sudo

pipx installs to your user directory (e.g. ~/.local/bin). For root:

# Option 1: Full path
sudo "$(which exchanger)" serve --port 80

# Option 2: System-wide install
sudo pip install exchangertool

# Option 3: Allow low ports without sudo (Linux)
sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' "$(which exchanger)"

🚀 Usage

Serve (default)

exchanger                              # serve current directory on port 80
exchanger serve -d /payloads -p 8080   # serve specific dir on custom port
exchanger serve --auth admin:s3cret    # require authentication
exchanger serve --one-shot             # exit after first download
exchanger serve -o                     # obfuscated commands to stdout
exchanger serve -c                     # copy first command to clipboard
exchanger serve -q                     # show QR code of download URL
exchanger serve --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:1080  # proxy-aware commands
exchanger serve --log requests.log     # log all requests

Receive (listen for uploads)

exchanger receive                      # listen for target to POST files
exchanger receive --encode base64      # auto-decode base64 uploads
exchanger receive --one-shot           # exit after first upload
exchanger receive --auth user:pass     # require auth for uploads

Push (send to target)

exchanger push payload.bin 10.0.0.1:8080           # push file to target
exchanger push payload.bin 10.0.0.1:8080 --encode base64  # base64-encode

SMB (optional)

exchanger serve --protocol smb -d /share -p 445
exchanger serve --protocol smb --auth admin:pass

🛠️ Help menu

usage: exchanger [-h] {serve,receive,push} ...

Serve files or listen to receive (target POSTs to host). Default port 80.

positional arguments:
  {serve,receive,push}  command (default: serve)
    serve               serve current directory; others can send/receive
    receive             listen for target to POST file to you
    push                push a file to a listening target

common options (serve/receive):
  --protocol {http,smb}  protocol (default: http)
  -p, --port PORT        port (default: 80)
  -d, --dir DIR          directory to serve/save (default: .)
  --bind ADDR            address to bind (default: 0.0.0.0)
  -o, --obfuscate        obfuscated commands to stdout
  --one-shot             exit after first transfer
  --auth USER:PASS       HTTP Basic auth
  --log FILE             log requests to file
  --proxy PROXY_URL      proxy for target commands
  -c, --clipboard        copy first command to clipboard
  -q, --qr              show QR code of download URL

receive-only:
  --encode base64        decode uploads on the server

push:
  exchanger push FILE TARGET [--encode base64]

📋 Generated Target Commands

When you start the server, exchanger prints ready-to-paste commands organized by platform:

All commands respect --auth, --proxy, and -o (obfuscation) flags.

🔒 Obfuscation Techniques (-o)

When -o is passed, all target commands are obfuscated and written to stdout (for piping/redirection).

PowerShell obfuscation:

• Quote interruption (i''ex, i""wr)
• Random case (iNvOkE-wEbReQuEsT)
• Backtick insertion (i`e`x)
• Format string iex (("{0}{1}{2}" -f 'i','e','x'))
• Get-Command wildcard (& (gcm i*e*-E*n))
• -EncodedCommand (base64 UTF-16LE full command wrap)
• [scriptblock]::Create() wrapping
• Set-Alias for cmdlet renaming
• URL string concatenation and base64 encoding
• $True/$False boolean substitution
• WebClient variable name randomization

Bash obfuscation:

• Base64 wrap (echo ... | base64 -d | bash, eval $(...), source <(...))
• Variable expansion (_var=curl; $_var ...)
• Double variable indirection (a=curl; b=a; ${!b} ...)
• Hex command names ($'\x63\x75\x72\x6c')
• Printf command names ($(printf '\x63\x75\x72\x6c'))
• Reverse pipe (echo '...reversed...' | rev | bash)
• IFS substitution (curl${IFS}-s${IFS}http://...)
• Quote tricks (cu''rl, wg''et)

🧪 Testing

CI runs the test suite on Python 3.10–3.13 with mypy type checking on every push/PR.

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v
mypy exchanger/ --ignore-missing-imports

Coverage report: pytest tests/ --cov=exchanger --cov-report=term-missing

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and feature requests are always welcome! Feel free to check out the issues page.

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.