Exploiting services and misconfigurations

Windows utilizes various services to manage and maintain standard system functionality, such as starting services, configuring start up programs, authentication, and software installation, to name a few. Our objective is to find vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in these services in order to elevate our privileges.

This process is dynamic and, as a result, will depend on the target configuration and deployment use case, primarily because the techniques involved in this process will depend on the implementation and configuration of particular services.

Given the robust nature of this process and the techniques used, we will be utilizing the Metasploitable3 virtual machine that we set up in Chapter 2, Setting Up Our Lab, of this book.

This is because the Metasploitable3 virtual machine runs on Windows Server 2008 and has been configured to be run as a server, as well as hosting various services and applications.

This robust configuration...