Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker's Handbook, Sixth Edition, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 14

Windows Kernel Exploitation

In this chapter, we cover the following topics:

•   The Windows kernel

•   Kernel drivers

•   Kernel debugging

•   Kernel exploitation

•   Token stealing

The Windows kernel and writing kernel exploits are massive topics individually; it takes years to learn kernel internals and then how to apply that knowledge properly to exploit security flaws. These flaws can be found not only in the kernel itself but also in extensions known as drivers. In this chapter, we will take a look at how to set up kernel debugging between two Windows systems, reverse engineer a kernel driver, and then exploit that kernel driver to elevate our privileges.

The Windows Kernel

Since the Windows kernel is so complex, we are only ...