Escalating from administrator to system
Administrator privileges allow an attacker to create and manage accounts and access most data available on a system. However, some complex functionality mandates that the requester have system-level access privileges. There are several ways to continue this escalation to the system level. The most common is to use the at
command, which is now deprecated due to security reasons and used by Windows to schedule tasks for a particular time. The at
command always runs with privileges at the system level; however, these now run in non-interactive mode only:
Using an interactive shell (enter shell
at the Meterpreter prompt), open a Command Prompt and determine the compromised system's local time. If the time is 12:50 (the at
function uses the 24-hour notation), schedule an interactive command shell for a later time, as shown in the following screenshot:
After the at
task is scheduled to run, reconfirm your access privileges at the Meterpreter prompt, as shown...