Preface

This book is a comprehensive guide on the privilege escalation process for Windows and Linux systems and is designed to be practical and hands-on by providing you with real-world exercises and scenarios in the form of vulnerable environments and virtual machines. The book starts off by introducing you to privilege escalation and covers the process of setting up a hands-on virtual hacking lab that will be used to demonstrate the practical aspects of the techniques covered during the course of this book. Each chapter of this book builds on the previous chapter and validates the learning process by providing you with exercises and scenarios that you can replicate.

You will learn how to enumerate as much information as possible from a target system, utilize manual and automated enumeration tools, elevate privileges on Windows systems by leveraging various techniques, such as impersonation attacks or kernel exploits, among many others, and elevate privileges on Linux systems through the use of kernel exploits or by exploiting SUID binaries.

This book is sorted into three sections that build on each other, whereby the first section covers the introduction to privilege escalation, the process of obtaining the initial foothold on a target system, and enumerating information from target systems. The next two sections are dedicated to covering the various privilege escalation techniques and tools for both Windows and Linux systems.

This book will provide you with the necessary skills to enumerate information from target systems, identify potential vulnerabilities, and utilize manual techniques or automated tools in order to elevate their privileges on the target system.