Swaks

Last updated
Swaks
Original author John Jetmore
Developer John Jetmore
Initial release2003
Stable release
20240103.0
Repository https://github.com/jetmore/swaks
Written inPerl
License GNU General Public License version 2
Website https://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/

Swaks (Swiss Army Knife for SMTP) is a command-line tool designed for testing and debugging Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) servers. It is written in Perl and supports a wide range of SMTP features, making it a popular utility among system administrators, [1] developers, [2] and penetration testers, [3] [4] along with email industry professionals. [5]

Contents

First released in 2003 [6] and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), it is developed and maintained by John Jetmore. The software was primarily intended for use on UNIX-like operating systems, and is available in many package managers, including on Linux [7] and macOS. [8] While there are no native packages for Windows, users can install Perl and run the software themselves, or leverage Windows Subsystem for Linux. [9]

Features

Swaks is typically used from the command line, but also integrates well with external tools and scripts for automated testing as options can also be specified in environment variables and configuration files. It supports SMTP, ESMTP, and LMTP, and protocol extensions such as TLS, authentication, and pipelining. Supported authentication mechanisms include PLAIN, LOGIN, CRAM-MD5, CRAM-SHA1, DIGEST-MD5, and NTLM/SPA/MSN.

Swaks can be used via multiple transport methods including UNIX and internet sockets, and pipes to spawned processes.

It is commonly used to troubleshoot [10] email issues, [11] but can also be used to simulate mail delivery failures, and verify authentication and encryption configurations. [12]

References

  1. ↑ "Integrating Swaks with Email Delivery". docs.oracle.com. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  2. ↑ Junaid, Abdul Wahab (2025-05-14). "swaks: Swiss Army Knife for SMTP testing". Abdul Wahab Junaid. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  3. ↑ "Offensive Security Tool: Swaks – Swiss Army Knife for SMTP | Black Hat Ethical Hacking". 2022-02-18. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  4. ↑ "Unleashing the Power of "Swaks" for Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing" . Retrieved 2025-09-03.
  5. ↑ "SWAKS: the SMTP Swiss Army Knife". www.wordtothewise.com. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  6. ↑ "Swaks - Swiss Army Knife for SMTP". jetmore.org. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  7. ↑ "Debian -- Details of package swaks in trixie". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2025-09-03.
  8. ↑ "swaks". Homebrew Formulae. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  9. ↑ "Sending test emails with Swaks - Sendamatic". www.sendamatic.net. 2025-07-08. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  10. ↑ "Using Swaks to Troubleshoot Email Issues on Your Server". Liquid Web. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  11. ↑ "How to configure SMTP settings within Azure Managed Grafana - Azure Managed Grafana". learn.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
  12. ↑ "SMTP Injection with STARTTLS using swaks". SparkPost Support. Retrieved 2025-09-02.
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