Privileged Attack Vectors: Building Effective Cyber-Defense Strategies to Protect Organizations

© Morey J. Haber and Brad Hibbert 2018

Morey J. Haber and Brad HibbertPrivileged Attack Vectorshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3048-0_5

5. Privilege Escalation

Morey J. Haber¹  and Brad Hibbert²

(1)

Heathrow, Florida, USA

(2)

Carp, Ontario, Canada

 

Once we have established an authenticated session of any type, whether the session is legitimate or hacked via any of the attacks previously discussed, a threat actor’s goal is to elevate privileges and extract data (outside of ransomware and causing business disruptions). See Figure 5-1. A standard user typically does not have rights to a database, sensitive files, or anything of value in mass. So how does a threat actor navigate an environment and gain administrator or root privileges to exploit them ...