A Hands-on Approach to Linux Privilege Escalation

This paper intends to provide multiple techniques that pentester can use to escalate their privileges and gain access to higher roles in Linux based operating systems.

• Linux Privilege Escalation can be of many types. The types discussed in this document are:
  1. Privilege Escalation by kernel exploit
  2. Privilege Escalation by Password Mining
  3. Privilege Escalation by Sudo
  4. Privilege Escalation by File Permissions
  5. Privilege Escalation by Crontab
• Setting up labs and performing the escalations.
• Discussing the mitigations to prevent such privilege escalation exploits.