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Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, a design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user.
A number of computer operating systems employ security features to help prevent malicious software from gaining sufficient privileges to compromise the computer system. . Operating systems lacking such features, such as DOS, Windows implementations prior to Windows NT (and its descendants), CP/M-80, and all Mac operating systems prior to Mac OS X, had only one category of user who was allowed ...
Most file systems include attributes of files and directories that control the ability of users to read, change, navigate, and execute the contents of the file system. In some cases, menu options or functions may be made visible or hidden depending on a user's permission level; this kind of user interface is referred to as permission-driven.
When a hierarchy of modes exists (ring-based security), faults and exceptions at one privilege level may destabilize only the higher-numbered privilege levels. Thus, a fault in Ring 0 (the kernel mode with the highest privilege) will crash the entire system, but a fault in Ring 2 will only affect Rings 3 and beyond and Ring 2 itself, at most.
A common method to implement privilege separation is to have a computer program fork into two processes. The main program drops privileges, and the smaller program keeps privileges in order to perform a certain task. The two halves then communicate via a socket pair. Thus, any successful attack against the larger program will gain minimal ...
In information security, a confused deputy is a computer program that is tricked by another program (with fewer privileges or less rights) into misusing its authority on the system. It is a specific type of privilege escalation. [1] The confused deputy problem is often cited as an example of why capability-based security is important.
Obtaining this access is a result of direct attack on a system, i.e. exploiting a vulnerability (such as privilege escalation) or a password (obtained by cracking or social engineering tactics like "phishing"). Once installed, it becomes possible to hide the intrusion as well as to maintain privileged access.
Offensive Security (also known as OffSec) [1] is an American international company working in information security, penetration testing and digital forensics.Beginning around 2007, [2] the company created open source projects, advanced security courses, the ExploitDB vulnerability database, and the Kali Linux distribution.