Privilege escalation: how attackers go from a foothold to root or admin on Linux, Windows and macOS.
A logic bug in screensharingd let attackers skip authentication entirely and land as root — no password required. Here's how it was found, patched, reverse-engineered, and finally weaponized.
CVE-2026-31431 chains AF_ALG, splice(), and authencesn's ESN scratch write into a deterministic 4-byte page cache write that gives an unprivileged local user root. Full technical breakdown, exploit mechanics, detection, mitigation, and patch status per distro.
BlueHammer is an unpatched, publicly released Windows local privilege escalation exploit that chains Microsoft Defender's update workflow, Volume Shadow Copy, Cloud Files callbacks, and opportunistic locks to reach NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM from a standard user account.
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An attacker starts with a low-privileged shell or user account and escalates to root or Administrator using misconfigurations, SUID binaries, kernel exploits, and Active Directory attacks. Here's every technique, the tools professionals use, and how to harden against it.
