Exploitation : Components of an Exploit : Listeners

Listeners

After an exploit successfully compromises a target system, Metasploit Pro uses a listener to wait for an incoming connection from the exploited system. The listener is the component that handles persistent agents from exploited systems.
When you create a listener, you associate the listener to a specific project. Therefore, when an exploited target makes a connection with the listener, you see an active session open in the project.
Note:
You assign a post-exploitation macro to each listener. When the exploited system makes a connection with the attacking system, Metasploit Pro launches the post-exploitation macro. Listeners stop after you delete a project or you manually stop a listener.