Stop remote-control attacks by what they do — not what they are.
A reverse shell is how an attacker turns a foothold into hands-on control of your machine — quietly opening a back-channel and issuing commands as if they were sitting at the keyboard. ShellProtect spots that remote-control behavior the instant a connection opens and kills it, no matter what tool, language, or port the attacker used — even code written from scratch.
Part of the 1stProtect platform. One agent. No slowdown.
Direct answer
ShellProtect applies runtime guardrails using user-space interception on the single SIGMA engine, so every action is evaluated before execution. It can enforce policy online or offline and coordinate with the on-host MCP gateway to preserve forensic context, reducing false positives while stopping unauthorized behavior at the action layer.
Once an attacker can run code on a machine, their next move is to open a remote connection and start giving orders. The trouble is that this attack can be written a thousand different ways:
Reverse shells come in any language, over any port, with any tool. Signature-based defenses are forever chasing the next variant — and there's always a next variant.
An attacker can have an AI generate a brand-new reverse shell in seconds — code no security tool has ever seen, with no signature to match.
ShellProtect doesn't try to recognize the code. It recognizes the behavior — so it catches the connection whether it's a known tool or written on the spot by an AI.
How it works
ShellProtect looks for the unmistakable pattern of a machine being controlled from the outside — regardless of language, tool, or port.
The moment a reverse shell tries to establish, ShellProtect detects it, prevents it, and kills the connection — before the attacker can run a single command.
One behavior-based approach across Windows, macOS, and Linux — and it works without knowing anything about the attacker, the code, or the language.
One engine. 22 modules.
It runs on the same single SIGMA engine as the rest of 1stProtect — working alongside ExecutionProtect to stop the malware that tries to open the shell, and ExfilProtect to keep data from leaving once an attacker is in. One agent, one policy, no conflicts — online, offline, or fully air-gapped.
What it stops:
See it in action
The setup. An everyday machine — Firefox, Slack, Zoom, Docker, the usual — with 1stProtect installed. The install runs fully offline, with no reboot, and starts protecting the programs already running, not just new ones.
The attack. Playing the attacker, we ask an unrestricted AI to write a brand-new reverse shell listener from scratch, start it up, and launch the matching reverse shell on the target — exactly how a modern attacker would.
The block. The instant the connection is established, ShellProtect detects and prevents it and severs the connection — before a single command can run. It never needed to recognize the code; it caught the behavior.
The record. On the risks page, a "Reverse shell detection" appears, attributed to ShellProtect, showing the process behind the attempt.
Deploy without breaking anything
ShellProtect installs fully offline — no internet, no downloads, no reboot — and protects the processes already running the moment it's on, not just future ones. It ships in Audit Mode by default, so you can watch exactly what would be blocked before flipping to Enforcement Mode with one config change.
No slowdown
<1% CPU overhead · <100ms enforcement latency
Works anywhere
Cloud · on-prem · Kubernetes · 100% offline / air-gapped
Your data stays on your metal
Raw telemetry never leaves the device · TLS 1.3 · SOC 2 Type II · ISO 27001
Built by the people who built the industry
1stProtect's team comes from CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Check Point, Splunk, Cisco, Oracle, McAfee, Symantec, and NTT Data — the engineers who defined modern endpoint security, now building runtime protection for what comes next.
We'll deploy in Audit Mode and show you, in your own environment, exactly how it stops a remote-control attack — even one written from scratch.
Product FAQ
ShellProtect detects and kills reverse shells and remote-control (C2) attacks the instant they connect — regardless of language, tool, or port. It is behavior-based, not signature-based, so it catches novel and AI-generated attack code that no security tool has ever seen before.
A reverse shell is how an attacker turns an initial foothold into hands-on control of a machine. The compromised machine opens an outbound connection back to the attacker, who can then issue commands as if sitting at the keyboard. ShellProtect detects this remote-control behavior the instant the connection is attempted and kills it before the attacker can run a single command.
Yes. Because ShellProtect detects behavior — the unmistakable pattern of a machine being controlled from the outside — it catches attacks regardless of whether the code was written by a human or generated by an AI. A brand-new payload with no signature is stopped the same way as a known tool.
Yes. ShellProtect provides backward protection, meaning it protects processes that were already running at the time of installation — not just new ones started afterward. This is a key difference from tools that require a reboot to protect existing processes.
ShellProtect is cross-platform across Windows, macOS, and Linux with the same behavior-based detection approach on all three. It installs fully offline with no internet connection required and no reboot.
For your security & engineering team
ShellProtect performs behavior-based detection and prevention of reverse-shell and remote-control (C2) activity through the user-space SIGMA engine — independent of language, tooling, port, or signature, so it neutralizes novel and AI-generated payloads the same way it handles known ones. Cross-platform across Windows, macOS, and Linux. On install it protects both pre-existing and newly created processes immediately ("backward protection"), fully offline, with no reboot — unlike tools that can only record existing processes but can't protect them without one. Detections (e.g. "Reverse shell detection") are recorded by the on-host MCP AI Investigator and stream to your SIEM/SOAR (Splunk, Datadog, Elastic) via JSON, gRPC, MCP, or Syslog. <1% CPU, real-time enforcement, with Audit and Enforcement modes.