Netcat

Shell Anywhere
One of Netcat's most powerful features is its ability to execute and redirect standard I/O to a binary or executable file on a listening computer. For example, the commands

Server:
  nc -l -p 12345 -e /bin/bash

where Server is the server running Linux and

Server:
  nc -l -p 12345 -e cmd.exe

where Server is the server running Windows initialize Netcat as a listener on port 12345. When another Netcat session connects to this computer on port 12345, Netcat redirects I/O to that system's shell program. Figure 3 shows an example of a Windows computer connected over Netcat to a Linux computer. Notice that the Linux whoami command returns the name of the currently logged-on user. In this example, we see that a Windows user who uses Netcat to connect to a bash shell prompt on the Linux computer can issue commands directly on that Linux system under the same privilege as the user account running Netcat—in this case the privileged root account. . . .