Checklist for privilege escalation in Linux
Best tool to look for Linux local privilege escalation vectors: LinPEAS****
System Information
- Get OS information
- Check the PATH, any writable folder?
- Check env variables, any sensitive detail?
- Search for kernel exploits using scripts (DirtyCow?)
- Check if the sudo version is vulnerable
- ****Dmesg signature verification failed error?
- More system enum (date, system stats, cpu info, printers)
- Enumerate more defenses
Drives
- List mounted drives
- Any unmounted drive?
- Any creds in fstab?
****Installed Software****
- Check for useful software installed
- Check for vulnerable software installed
****Processes
- Is any unknown software running?
- Is any software with more privileges that it should have running?
- Search for exploits for running processes (specially if running of versions)
- Can you modify the binary of any running process?
- Monitor processes and check if any interesting process is running frequently
- Can you read some interesting process memory (where passwords could be saved)?
Scheduled/Cron jobs?
- Is the PATH being modified by some cron and you can write in it?
- Any wildcard in a cron job?
- Some modifiable script is being executed or is inside modifiable folder?
- Have you detected that some script could be being executed very frequently? (every 1, 2 or 5 minutes)
Services
- Any writable .service file?
- Any writable binary executed by a service?
- Any writable folder in systemd PATH?
Timers
- Any writable timer?
Sockets
- Any writable .socket file?
- Can you communicate with any socket?
- HTTP sockets with interesting info?
D-Bus
- Can you communicate with any D-Bus?
Network
- Enumerate the network to know where you are
- Open ports you couldn’t access before getting a shell inside the machine?
- Can you sniff traffic using
tcpdump?
Users
- Generic users/groups enumeration
- Do you have a very big UID? Is the machine vulnerable?
- Can you escalate privileges thanks to a group you belong to?
- Clipboard data?
- Password Policy?
- Try to use every known password that you have discovered previously to login with each possible user. Try to login also without password.
Writable PATH
- If you have write privileges over some folder in PATH you may be able to escalate privileges
SUDO and SUID commands
- Can you execute any comand with sudo? Can you use it to READ, WRITE or EXECUTE anything as root? (GTFOBins)
- Is any exploitable suid binary? (GTFOBins)
- Are sudo commands limited by path? can you bypass the restrictions?
- ****Sudo/SUID binary without path indicated?
- ****SUID binary specifying path? Bypass
- ****LD_PRELOAD vuln****
- ****Lack of .so library in SUID binary ****from a writable folder?
- ****SUDO tokens available? Can you create a SUDO token?
- Can you read or modify sudoers files?
- Can you modify /etc/ld.so.conf.d/?
- OpenBSD DOAS ****command
Capabilities
- Has any binary any unexpected capability?
ACLs
- Has any file any unexpected ACL?
Open Shell sessions
- screen?
- tmux?
SSH
- Debian OpenSSL Predictable PRNG - CVE-2008-0166****
- ****SSH Interesting configuration values****
Interesting Files
- Profile files - Read sensitive data? Write to privesc?
- passwd/shadow files - Read sensitive data? Write to privesc?
- Check commonly interesting folders for sensitive data
- Weird Localtion/Owned files, you may have access or alter executable files
- Modified in last mins
- Sqlite DB files
- Hidden files
- Script/Binaries in PATH
- Web files (passwords?)
- Backups?
- Known files that contains passwords: Use Linpeas and LaZagne
- Generic search
****Writable Files****
- Modify python library to execute arbitrary commands?
- Can you modify log files? Logtotten exploit
- Can you modify /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/? Centos/Redhat exploit
- Can you write in ini, int.d, systemd or rc.d files?
****Other tricks****
- Can you abuse NFS to escalate privileges?
- Do you need to escape from a restrictive shell?
If you want to **know** about my **latest modifications**/**additions** or you have **any suggestion for HackTricks or PEASS**, ****join the 💬 **PEASS & HackTricks telegram group here, or follow me on Twitter** 🐦@carlospolopm.
If you want to share some tricks with the community you can also submit pull requests to ****https://github.com/carlospolop/hacktricks ****that will be reflected in this book.
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