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shell-cheat-sheet

Shells Cheat Sheet Notes from the TryHackMe room “What the Shell” — concepts and hands-on command practice. For use in labs and authorized testing. <ip> is the <IP> of the attacking machine (Kali), <port> is your chosen <port> (4444 in examples).

1. What is a shell, and the basic model A shell is an interface for running commands on a machine. In pentesting the goal is to get a shell on the target and escalate to higher privileges. Two states: • Dumb shell — the basic shell you get first: no autocomplete, no history, Ctrl-C kills the connection, su/ssh/nano don’t work. • Interactive / TTY shell — a full interactive shell. A dumb shell needs stabilizing to become one. The main idea to keep in your head: a reverse shell isn’t a command, it’s a goal — make the target hand you control over a connection. netcat, socat, one-liners, mkfifo, msfvenom are all just tools for that one idea. You’re not learning 10 commands; you hold one goal and pick the tool that fits what you found on the target: netcat is there → use it; not there → a Python one-liner; need stability or encryption → socat; need a file → msfvenom.