Privilege escalation
The initial access to the target environment, in most cases, is with a low privileged user. This means the access includes no or a very limited set of permissions. The immediate objective then is to expand the access from the normal user account to an account with more permissions or administrative access. The process to move from normal to administrative access (or access with more permissions) is called privilege escalation.
There are multiple ways or methods to elevate privileges, such as the following:
- Rootkits (these will be explained in more detail in the Rootkits section later in this chapter)
- Unpatched vulnerabilities
- Zero days
- Misconfigurations
Regarding unpatched vulnerabilities, you will find a lot of tools utilizing these to automate privilege escalation. One common tool is the Metasploit Framework (https://docs.metasploit.com/), which is installed by default in Kali Linux. In addition, administrators or system admins tend...
