Cyber Operations: Building, Defending, and Attacking Modern Computer Networks

© Mike O'Leary 2019

Mike O'LearyCyber Operationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4294-0_9

9. Privilege Escalation in Linux

Mike O’Leary¹ 

(1)

Towson, MD, USA

 

Introduction

An attacker that gains a foothold on a Linux system wants to escalate privileges to root in the same way that an attacker on a Windows domain wants to escalate privileges to Administrator or Domain Administrator. The techniques used on a Linux target are somewhat different. There are fewer privilege escalation modules in Metasploit, so an attacker may need to rely on a customized exploit. The success of these exploits may require a particular distribution and a version. These exploits are usually distributed as source code, and so need to be compiled. The 2016 Dirty COW class of ...