How to Prevent Reverse Shell Attacks

In today’s digital era, reverse shell attacks are a severe risk for contractors. Hackers today are becoming more and more relentless in exploiting open security holes within organizations that could leads to organization catastrophic financial loss.

But there are several steps that can be taken to prevent and defend against such damaging behavior in order to shield your organization’s cybersecurity efforts. Concepts, tips and how to prevent reverse shell attacks.

Reverse Shell-Introduction

In a reverse shell attack, hackers use their own computers or mobile devices to access the target network. Once the shell connection is created through a victim, hackers have access to run commands that ultimately put your organization’s valuable data at risk or worse billions of dollars in downtime.

Although reverse shells can be used for maintenance among legitimate IT professionals, once cybercriminals get ahold of them they become an avenue to compromise the security of your network.

These attacks include several subcategories based on the code used, including:

• BASH attacks
• PHP reverse shell
• Java reverse shell
• Netcat attacks
• Perl shell attacks
• Python reverse shell

Reverse shell Attack mechanisms

Hackers send shady attachments or they give links to unknown participants (within the context of a reverse shell attack) which are loaded with malware-enabled files. The hacker then uses this to insert themselves into the user experience (i.e., when triggering A or B above, but only NOW they’re doing it on someone else’s computer) as a man-in-the-middle so s/he can do things like:

• Expose sensitive business data
• Steal trade secrets or client data
• Use the victim’s device to conduct additional attacks on the network
• Sample Demonstration of a Reverse Shell Attack

Reverse shell attacks have been seen affecting business operations far too frequently. A common occurrence is for these attacks to begin with emails that deceive users, so organizations should have taken them into consideration in terms of cybersecurity.

This email, looking official and coming from a service your business uses (like FedEx or Meta Ads) will ask you to immediately log back into the application using their link.

To improve your network security, you need to recognize that many people reuse password because they just cannot remember all of them for each device/network/application; However, some level of this behavior is expected and best practice should be to encourage the use of unique complex passwords for network devices whenever possible.

Additionally, staff must use appropriate other security mechanisms (2 FA-type weapons) or remote network authentication devices to strengthen network protection.

Regular System Updates

The sooner you patch your systems and application code, the less time bad actors will have to exploit vulnerabilities. Using tools such as ByteHide can help to detect any vulnerability within your application’s source code which protect it against shell attacks.
Take advantage in your app security and request your free demo for a easy demonstration of our All-in-One Cybersecurity Platform

Implement a Strong Firewall

Most of the reverse shell scenario are using outbound traffic to gain device control will result in severe firewall actions needed. The benefits of having a sturdy firewall system are:

• Allow incoming connections from just your IP addresses
• Block outgoing connections to untrusted sites
• Monitoring network traffic to spot unauthorized access attempts promptly

A firewall with this functionality allows your IT security department to spot and block any unauthorized access attempts which is a part of general system protection measures.

Beware Of Phishing Emails

While hackers adapt away from reliance on email alone, it continues to be used at scale as a primary delivery weapon of choice for the more mature elements in our threat landscape. Suspicions of email are the biggest threat to reverse shell attacks, and it is important to understand that.

Educate your team on these protocols, and protect your organization from reverse shell attacks:

• Even from your superior, treat all urgent email requests with suspicion.
• Look for spelling and grammar mistakes. Patrick in accounting may not be an English professor, but discrepancy is par for the course with most phishing emails.
• Watch out for strange salutations. If your boss suddenly changes the tone of his salutation (e.g. from “hi” to Dear), then you should recognize that there is an impending threat
• Investigate inconsistencies in email addresses. Name of the sender may seem original but check if his email address corresponds with that from your boss.
• Take care to be wary of email attachments from unknown sources, because cybercriminals can use harmful codes in not just.exe files but also other file formats. txt files.
• Do not click on links in a malicious email, attackers like to get victims to enter login information into fake login pages sent through emails otherwise known as reverse shell attacks.
• Encourage your team to be more vigilant by reporting suspicious emails backto the IT department so they could quickly close down malicious IP addresses and alsoupdate code accordingly.

Tools to Prevent Reverse Shell Attacks

The best thing organizations can do is to try and prevent reverse shell attacks from occurring in the first place. These efforts can benefit from software security applications.

ByteHide Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Tools assist organizations in identifying and catching reverse shell attacks as soon as they are created. Our Managed Application Security services protect those operations from these threats as well.

Order the cutting-edge products of ByteHide and secure your company with these advanced security solutions that encrypt data against any potential attack on sensitive information. Reach out to us for a tailored security evaluation today!