Glossary
TTY (Pseudo-Terminal)
A terminal interface; upgrading a raw reverse shell to a full TTY restores job control, tab completion, and interactive programs like sudo and vi.
A TTY (teletype, now a pseudo-terminal or PTY) is the terminal interface a
normal interactive shell expects. A fresh reverse shell
usually lacks one: no job control, no tab completion, no command history, and
interactive programs like sudo, ssh, and vi break or hang.
"Upgrading" the shell allocates a real PTY, commonly via:
python3 -c 'import pty; pty.spawn("/bin/bash")'
followed by stty raw -echo; fg on your side. Some tools —
socat — allocate a PTY automatically. Full
steps in upgrading a reverse shell.