In this chapter, we looked at the methodology of escalating privileges and explored different methods and tools that can be utilized to achieve the goal of the penetration test.
We first started with common system-level privilege escalation using bypassuac, and also by utilizing existing Windows-scheduled tasks.
We focused on utilizing Meterpreter to gain system-level control and later we took a deep dive into PowerShell's Empire tool, followed by harvesting the credentials by using password sniffers on the network. We also utilized responder and SMB relay attacks to gain remote system access, and we used Responder to capture the passwords of different systems on a network that utilizes SMB.
We completely compromised an Active Directory using a structured approach. Finally, we exploited the access rights in an Active Directory using an Empire PowerShell, and compromised...