🖥️Privilege Escalation

Introduction

Privilege escalation refers to gaining higher-level access within a system, such as moving from a standard user to an administrative or root user, allowing more control over the system.

When working on a compromised system, we often need to escalate our privileges. This means gaining higher-level access to perform more impactful actions and gather sensitive information. But why would we need to escalate privileges?

• Password hashes: Some password hashes are only accessible to privileged users, such as the root user on Linux. By escalating our privileges, we can retrieve these hashes and attempt to crack them, giving us access to user accounts.

• Certificates: If we want to authenticate to another system, sometimes we need certificates that are only available to privileged users. Escalating privileges helps us access those certificates.

• Token attacks: We may want to steal tokens from other users or systems, which can be used to impersonate them and access their resources.

• Impersonation: By obtaining root-level access, we can impersonate any user on the system, gaining access to their data and privileges across connected systems.