detecting-privilege-escalation

name	detecting-privilege-escalation
description	Detects privilege escalation vulnerabilities including setuid/setgid abuse, permission check bypasses, and unsafe privilege management. Use when analyzing setuid binaries, permission checks, or investigating privilege escalation paths.

Privilege Escalation Detection

Detection Workflow

1. Identify privileged operations: Find setuid/setgid binaries, locate privilege checks, identify file operations with elevated privileges, map privilege boundaries
2. Analyze permission model: Understand intended permission model, identify all privilege boundaries, map privilege escalation paths, assess access control mechanisms
3. Check validation: Verify permission checks are correct, look for race conditions, assess validation completeness, identify TOCTOU issues
4. Assess exploitability: Can attacker bypass checks? Is there a usable escalation path? What's the impact of successful escalation?

Key Patterns

• Setuid/setgid binaries: binaries with setuid/setgid bits set, unsafe operations in privileged binaries, environment variable usage, path traversal vulnerabilities
• Insecure permission checks: race conditions in permission checks, missing privilege validation, TOCTOU in file operations, weak access control implementations
• Environment-based escalation: environment variable manipulation, LD_PRELOAD/DT_RPATH abuse, PATH manipulation, IFS exploitation
• Resource manipulation: symlink attacks, hard link manipulation, file descriptor manipulation, /proc filesystem abuse

Output Format

Report with: id, type, subtype, severity, confidence, location, binary_info (path, setuid, setgid, owner), vulnerability, attack_path, exploitable, impact, mitigation.

Severity Guidelines

• CRITICAL: Direct path to root/admin access
• HIGH: Escalation to lower privileged user
• MEDIUM: Limited privilege escalation
• LOW: Information disclosure about privileges

See Also

• patterns.md - Detailed detection patterns and exploitation scenarios
• examples.md - Example analysis cases and code samples
• references.md - CWE references and mitigation strategies