Penelope: The Modern Shell Handler That’s Redefining RCE Exploitation

by Nam Phong · September 10, 2025

Penelope is a powerful shell handler built as a modern netcat replacement for RCE exploitation, aiming to simplify, accelerate, and optimize post-exploitation workflows.

Features

Session Features

Description	Unix with Python>=2.3	Unix without Python>=2.3	Windows
Auto-upgrade shell	PTY	PTY(*)	readline
Real-time terminal resize	✅	✅	❌
Logging shell activity	✅	✅	✅
Download remote files/folders	✅	✅	✅
Upload local/HTTP files/folders	✅	✅	✅
In-memory local/HTTP script execution with real-time output downloading	✅	❌	❌
Local port forwarding	✅	❌	❌
Spawn shells on multiple tabs and/or hosts	✅	✅	❌
Maintain X amount of active shells per host no matter what	✅	✅	❌

Global Features

Streamline interaction with the targets via modules
Multiple sessions
Multiple listeners
Serve files/folders via HTTP (-s switch)
Can be imported by python3 exploits and get shell on the same terminal (see Extras)

Modules

Meterpreter module demonstration

Penelope can work in conjunction with metasploit exploits by disabling the default handler with set DisablePayloadHandler True

Install & Use

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