Summary

This chapter has gone through the privilege escalation phase. It has been noted that there are two broad classifications of privilege escalation: vertical and horizontal. It has also brought to light that horizontal privilege escalation is the best luck that an attacker can hope for. This is because the methods used for horizontal privilege escalation tend not to be very complex.

This chapter has gone through most of the sophisticated vertical privilege escalation methods that attackers use against systems. It is noteworthy that most of the discussed techniques involve attempts to compromise legitimate services and processes in order to get higher privileges. This is probably the last task that the attacker will have to perform in the entire attack.

The next chapter will explain how the attackers deliver the final blow and, if successful, how they reap the rewards of their efforts.