Ethical Hacking

14PIVOTING AND PRIVILEGE ESCALATION

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

–Richard Feynman

By this point in the book, we’ve explored many ways of compromising a single machine. But attackers often want full control of the entire private network they’re targeting. With full control of the network, the attacker can move freely from machine to machine, extracting information and implanting malware as they please. Moreover, once the attacker has control of the network, removing them can be very difficult because they could be hiding anywhere. In this chapter we’ll explore two techniques for moving through the network.

First, you’ll learn a pivoting ...