Valid Linux Post-Exploitation Method for Privilege Elevation
Question
During a system penetration test, a security engineer successfully gained access to a shell on a Linux host as a standard user and wants to elevate the privilege levels.
Which of the following is a valid Linux post-exploitation method to use to accomplish this goal?
Answers
Explanations
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A. B. C. D. E.C.
https://docs.rapid7.com/insightvm/elevating-permissions/The correct answer to the given scenario is A. Spawn a shell using sudo and an escape string such as sudo vim -c !sh'.
Explanation: After gaining access to a shell on a Linux host, the security engineer may want to elevate their privilege levels to gain access to sensitive data or perform other malicious activities.
In Linux, sudo (short for "superuser do") is a command that allows a user with appropriate permissions to execute a command as a superuser or another user. By using the sudo command along with an escape string, a security engineer can spawn a new shell with elevated privileges.
The escape string "sudo vim -c !sh'" is a commonly used method to spawn a shell as a root user in Linux. This command opens the vim text editor as a root user and executes the "sh" command to spawn a new shell with root privileges.
Performing ASIC password cracking on the host (Option B) is not a valid post-exploitation method as it requires extensive resources and time, and it is not guaranteed to be successful.
Reading the /etc/passwd file to extract the usernames (Option C) is a reconnaissance technique that helps identify user accounts on the system but does not provide a way to elevate privileges.
Initiating unquoted service path exploits (Option D) is a Windows-specific post-exploitation technique that is not applicable to Linux systems.
Using the UNION operator to extract the database schema (Option E) is a SQL injection technique that is not applicable in this scenario since it involves interacting with a database rather than elevating privileges on a Linux system.
Therefore, the valid Linux post-exploitation method to elevate privilege levels in this scenario is to spawn a shell using sudo and an escape string such as sudo vim -c !sh'.
