Summary

This chapter introduced you to the privilege escalation process, explained how privileges and user accounts are implemented in modern operating systems, and looked at the differences between privilege escalation on Windows and Linux systems. It also highlighted the most common privilege escalation techniques and explained how they can be exploited.

You should now have a good understanding of the privilege escalation process, how permissions and privileges are implemented, and the various penetration testing techniques that are used on both Windows and Linux.

In the next chapter, we'll get started with setting up our virtual environment and preparing our penetration-testing distribution. We will also look at the various tools and frameworks we will be utilizing to enhance and optimize the privilege escalation process.