Introduction

In the previous chapter, we looked at how one can exploit into the service and gain access to the server as a user with either a low or system privilege. In this chapter, we will look at how to exploit a low-privilege user to an escalated user - even the system user in this case. We will be covering escalation techniques for both Windows and Linux in this chapter. Usually in a network, when a server is compromised, an attacker always tries to elevate the privileges to do more damage. Once an attacker gains access to a higher-privilege user, he gains the capability to run system-level commands, steal password hashes and domain passwords, or even set up a backdoor and pivot the attack to target other systems in the network. Let us proceed to understand how these privileges are escalated.