Sams Teach Yourself TCP/IP in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Getting Comfortable

After the intruder has successfully gained access to a single system, he begins settling in and getting comfortable. One of the first tasks is to obtain additional system privileges. Most really serious hacking requires a high level of access to the system. Intruders employ a number of strategies for increasing their access privileges. One method is to search around for files with password information. Even an encrypted password file can be downloaded to a safe location and attacked through a brute force dictionary attack. A hacker can use Trojan horses or buffer overflow techniques to trick the system into giving him additional privileges.

The Holy Grail of the hacker is always administrative or root access to the system. ...