exe2hexbat
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Encodes Windows executable binaries into ASCII hex text for inline file transfer using DEBUG.exe or PowerShell.
Summary
exe2hexbat is an open-source command-line tool that converts a Windows executable into ASCII hex text so it can be pasted or echoed onto a target machine and rebuilt there using DEBUG.exe or PowerShell, both installed by default on Windows. It runs from a terminal, taking a binary as a file argument or via STDIN and writing BATch and/or PowerShell restore scripts, with optional compression before encoding and Expect scripts to drive the transfer automatically over Telnet or WinEXE. This suits red teamers and penetration testers who need to move tools onto a compromised host without relying on native file-transfer protocols that might be blocked or logged. It sits in the payload-delivery corner of post-exploitation tooling, alongside other living-off-the-land transfer tricks rather than any named competitor. First committed in 2014 with 7 contributors and 7 tracked releases, it has had no commits in the past year.
Encodes Windows executable binaries into ASCII hex text for inline file transfer using DEBUG.exe or PowerShell.
How exe2hexbat helps
How do I get a tool onto a compromised host without touching disk-based file transfer that might be blocked or logged?
it turns the binary into ASCII hex text that can be pasted into a shell or echoed line by line, then rebuilt on the target using DEBUG.exe or PowerShell already present on the box
Will this payload actually fit through a narrow text-only channel like a limited shell or webshell box?
optional compression before encoding shrinks the binary first, cutting the amount of hex text that has to be typed or pasted through the constrained channel
Do I need to babysit the paste-and-rebuild process on the target?
it can generate an Expect script that drives the whole transfer automatically over Telnet or WinEXE instead of manual copy-paste
How much of the original file size will I be pushing across the wire after compression?
it reports the percentage saved by each compression stage it applies, so the operator can see the reduction before transferring
Languages
Command line
| option | found in | since | description |
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for exe2hexbat, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail exe2hexbat puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
1 entry
No entries match these filters.
- January 20161
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in g0tmi1k/exe2hex, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 0 ±0 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 0 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 0 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed not measured of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 3.3 years issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog 0 of 1 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 0
- Contributors / month 0
- Commits / month 0
- Stars 319
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Articles
1 article · updated Nov 4, 2026Where exe2hexbat turns up in what others publish: how-tos, attack reports that name it, and incident write-ups. A row says why it is here and quotes where the article names it; the link goes to the publisher.
Tutorials & guides 1
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File Transfer Filter Bypass: Exe2Hex
Exe2hex is a tool that g0tmilk developed, and you can find it here .
2 more quotes
Table of content Background Exe2hex CMD script (PoSH method) Exe2hex URL encoded CMD script (PoSH method) Exe2hex BAT script (DEBUG.exe method) Exe2hex STDIN to CMD Script (PoSH method) Exe2hex TXT file (DEBUG and PoSH…
ls -lah nc.exe upx -9 nc.exe ls -lah nc.exe Note: You can achieve the same thing by using -cc filter with the exe2hex tool.
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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