Glossary
Reverse Shell
A shell session in which the target host connects outbound to an attacker-controlled listener, rather than the attacker connecting in — the standard post-exploitation primitive in authorized testing.
A reverse shell is a command-line session where the compromised host
initiates the connection back to a listener the tester controls. Because
outbound traffic (especially on ports 443 and 80) is rarely filtered as
strictly as inbound traffic, a reverse shell traverses firewalls and NAT that
would block a bind shell.
The target runs a payload that wires a shell's stdin/stdout/stderr to a TCP socket; the tester runs a listener to receive it. See what is a reverse shell for the full walkthrough, or build one with the reverse shell generator.
Use only against systems you own or are explicitly authorized to test.