Becoming Root Via a Misconfigured PATH
Becoming Root Via a Misconfigured PATH

Linux privilege escalation by exploiting a misconfigured PATH variable

Photo by Kevin Horvat on Unsplash.

Welcome back to the Linux Security Series! In this series, we’ll discuss security issues that affect Linux systems and common misconfigurations that lead to them. Let’s get started!

Privilege escalation is a way that attackers can escalate their privileges on a system. For example, let’s say that an attacker has gained access to your web server, but only as a low-privileged user. They cannot read or write sensitive files, execute scripts, or change system configuration. How could they compromise your server and maintain their access there?

If they can find a way to trick the system into thinking that they are the root user, the attacker can carry out more powerful attacks like reading and writing sensitive files and inserting permanent backdoors into the system. And this is where privilege escalation comes in.

Today, let’s talk about how attackers can exploit a root user with a misconfigured PATH variable to run scripts with root permissions.
['Vickie Li']
['Linux', 'Cybersecurity', 'Technology', 'Programming', 'Software Development']