Week 9

 This week, we participated in a forum-style session that explored real-world exploitation techniques, categorized into remote execution and local privilege escalation. These attacks represent the next steps after reconnaissance and vulnerability mapping — actually compromising a system.

Category 1: Remote Code Execution (RCE)

Remote execution occurs when an attacker is able to run code on a system without physical access — usually by exploiting a vulnerable service over the network.

EternalBlue (CVE-2017-0144)

Previously discussed in Weeks 6 and 7, EternalBlue targets Microsoft’s SMBv1 protocol. It allows attackers to gain full control over a system by sending crafted network packets to port 445. Once inside, malware like WannaCry or NotPetya can be deployed to spread or destroy.

Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228)

A critical zero-day in Apache Log4j, a Java-based logging library. It allows attackers to perform remote code execution by injecting malicious input (e.g., into a login form or HTTP header), which the vulnerable server processes and executes. It impacted countless systems globally, from cloud services to enterprise software.

 Category 2: Local Privilege Escalation

Once inside a system — either through physical access or as a low-privileged user — attackers may try to escalate their permissions using local exploits.

Dirty COW (CVE-2016-5195)

This Linux vulnerability exploits a race condition in the kernel’s memory subsystem, allowing attackers to write to read-only memory areas. A normal user can use this to overwrite files and gain root access — the highest level of control on Linux.

Baron Samedit (CVE-2021-3156)

Found in the sudo utility on Linux, this vulnerability allows low-privileged users to trigger a heap-based buffer overflow, leading to root access. Named “Baron Samedit,” it exploits incorrect input parsing in sudo, and affects several major Linux distributions.

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