Exploitation for Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges. Exploitation of a software vulnerability occurs when an adversary takes advantage of a programming error in a program, service, or within the operating system software or kernel itself to execute adversary-controlled code. Security constructs such as permission levels will often hinder access to information and use of certain techniques, so adversaries will likely need to perform privilege escalation to include use of software exploitation to circumvent those restrictions. When initially gaining access to a system, an adversary may be operating within a lower privileged process which will prevent them from accessing certain resources on the system. Vulnerabilities may exist, usually in operating system components and software commonly running at higher permissions, that can be exploited to gain higher levels of access on the system. This could enable someone to move from unprivileged or user level permissions to SYSTEM or root permissions depending on the component that is vulnerable. This could also enable an adversary to move from a virtualized environment, such as within a virtual machine or container, onto the underlying host. This may be a necessary step for an adversary compromising an endpoint system that has been properly configured and limits other privilege escalation methods. Adversaries may bring a signed vulnerable driver onto a compromised machine so that they can exploit the vulnerability to execute code in kernel mode. This process is sometimes referred to as Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD).(Citation: ESET InvisiMole June 2020)(Citation: Unit42 AcidBox June 2020) Adversaries may include the vulnerable driver with files delivered during Initial Access or download it to a compromised system via [Ingress Tool Transfer](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1105) or [Lateral Tool Transfer](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1570).

Linked Issues

Issuelinks
Linktype	Issue
is related to	Techniques
is blocked by	Update Software
is blocked by	Exploit Protection
is blocked by	Application Isolation and Sandboxing
is blocked by	Threat Intelligence Program
is blocked by	Detection Strategy for Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
is blocked by	Execution Prevention
is blocked by	Asset Inventories
is blocked by	Security, Compliance & Resilience Controls Oversight
is blocked by	Secure Baseline Configurations
is blocked by	Least Functionality
is blocked by	Continuous Monitoring
is blocked by	Malicious Code Protection (Anti-Malware)
is blocked by	Endpoint File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)
is blocked by	Mobile Code
is blocked by	Account Management
is blocked by	Least Privilege
is blocked by	Boundary Protection
is blocked by	Data Flow Enforcement – Access Control Lists (ACLs)
is blocked by	Application Partitioning
is blocked by	Process Isolation
is blocked by	Security Function Isolation
is blocked by	Concealment & Misdirection
is blocked by	Threat Intelligence Feeds
is blocked by	Threat Hunting
is blocked by	Software & Firmware Patching
is blocked by	Vulnerability Scanning

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