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Linux Privilege Escalation: Basics

Learn the fundamentals of Linux privilege escalation. From enumeration to exploitation, get hands-on with over 8 different privilege escalation techniques.

Task 1: Introduction

Task 2: Privilege Escalation: Sudo

Task 3: Privilege Escalation: SUID

Task 4: Privilege Escalation: PATH

Task 5: Privilege Escalation: Capabilities

Task 6: Privilege Escalation: Cron Jobs

Task 7: Privilege Escalation: NFS

Task 8: Conclusion

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Linux Privilege Escalation: Basics

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Learn the fundamentals of Linux privilege escalation. From enumeration to exploitation, get hands-on with over 8 different privilege escalation techniques.

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75 min

5,758

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Introduction

In the  Privilege Escalation: Enumeration room, you built a foundation in enumeration — learning how to survey a Linux system for misconfigurations, weak permissions, and potential escalation vectors. Now it's time to act on what you found.

This room picks up where the Linux Privilege Escalation: Enumeration room left off. You'll take the same kinds of misconfigurations you learned to spot and actually exploit them to escalate from a low-privileged user to root. Each section focuses on a different vector: abusing sudo permissions, leveraging SUID binaries, hijacking the PATH variable, exploiting writable cron jobs, taking advantage of Linux capabilities, and misconfigured NFS shares.

Note: Each task will have it’s own target machine. Make sure to always spin up the new target machine matching the task.

Prerequisites

Learning Objectives

  • Understand basic Linux privilege escalation vectors
  • Understand the impact of Linux privilege escalation
  • Demonstrate manual exploitation for Linux privilege escalation
Answer the questions below

Ready to escalate privileges!