Looking for weaknesses

Now that we have a stable shell, we need to look for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or anything that will help us in escalating privileges on the system. In this recipe, we will look at some of the ways privileges can be escalated to get to the root of the system.

How to do it...

The basic step I would recommend performing after we have a shell on a server is to do as much enumeration as possible. The more we know, the better the chance of escalating privileges on the system. The key steps to escalating privileges on a system are as follows:

• Collect: Use enumeration, more enumeration, and some more enumeration.
• Process: Sort through the data, analyze it, and prioritize it.
• Search: Know what to...