12 Ways to Enumerate Linux for Privilege Escalation

Want to gain superuser access to a Linux system? Here are some of the best ways to enumerate a Linux machine.

Enumeration is one of the key stages of penetration testing. It's the first thing to do when you've compromised a target system as a penetration tester. Although there are a plethora of tools to automate this process, it's always recommended to manually scour through and double-check the system for potential vectors of privilege escalation. 

Let's look at the different ways to manually enumerate a Linux system for privilege escalation.

Privilege escalation, also known as Escalation of Privilege (EOP) is a core component of penetration testing and the penetration testing methodology. As the name suggests, it's a stage when you attempt to elevate your privileges to the administrator or, in Linux systems, the root user.

To gain root privileges, you need to first find a vulnerability in the system. This is where enumeration comes into play. Though there are tools to automate enumeration, more often than not, manual and thorough enumeration can uncover misconfigurations and other vulnerabilities that aren't picked up by tools.