Escalation Path: Sudo

Question 1

Explain what is escalation via shell escaping.

Answer 1

Some binaries have the functionality of spawning shells. If an user has sudo permissions over a binary like that, then he will be able to execute it with sudo and spawn a shell as root. So the user will escape the restricted shell that he was originally in.

Question 2

Explain what is escalation via intended functionality.

Answer 2

Binaries that have an intended functionality that, when an user has sudo permissions over it, can be abused to give access to sensitive information.

Question 3

Why is the sudo -l command so important?

Answer 3

Because it shows the binaries that the current user has sudo permissions over. So you can look for privilege escalation paths like shell escaping and intended functionality.