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reverseshell

Glossary

Socat

A multipurpose relay that can allocate a pseudo-terminal and use TLS, giving a fully interactive reverse shell without a manual TTY upgrade.

Socat is a bidirectional relay between two data channels. For reverse shells its advantage over netcat is that it can allocate a pseudo-terminal on both ends, delivering a fully interactive shell from the start — no manual stty upgrade — and it supports TLS via OPENSSL. The cost is that socat must be installed on the target, which it frequently is not. See socat reverse shells.