CVE-2021-4034 Polkit: Emulation and Detection
In this lab, you’ll learn how to emulate, detect, and mitigate attacks against vulnerable instances of policy-kit. When you’re finished, you'll not only know how to exploit CVE-2021-4034, you'll also be able to protect against real-world attacks.
Terms and conditions apply.
Challenge
Getting Started in the Lab Environment
Here are the initial instructions and explanation of the lab environment. Read this while your environment is busy creating itself from nothing. Yes, this violates physics; we know. How fun!
Challenge
Emulating an Attack Against Polkit
In this section, we begin with the challenge: emulating an attack against a vulnerable Linux system. The challenge consists of a brief overview of the Polkit privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2021-4034) followed by a hands-on exercise.
Challenge
Detecting Attacks Against Polkit
Armed with the knowledge of how to exploit the Polkit vulnerability, you're ready to proceed to the next challenge: detecting exploitation. The challenge consists of another hands-on exercise, where you'll leverage system access logs to discover indicators of compromise from previous attacks.
Challenge
Preventing Attacks Against Polkit
With the knowledge of how to emulate and detect attacks, you're now ready to begin the final challenge, where you'll learn how to leverage simple and effective techniques to mitigate future privilege escalation attacks. The challenge consists of a hands-on exercise, whereby the Polkit SUID bit is configured to prevent further attacks using native Linux commands.
Challenge
The Last Challenge.
Welcome to the final challenge! This is your last chance to experiment in the environment. Clicking Finish Lab will end this little world that flittered into existence just for you.
Provided environment for hands-on practice
We will provide the credentials and environment necessary for you to practice right within your browser.
Guided walkthrough
Follow along with the author’s guided walkthrough and build something new in your provided environment!
Did you know?
On average, you retain 75% more of your learning if you get time for practice.
Recommended prerequisites
- Working knowledge of the Linux OS
- Basic scripting with Bash
- Basic scripting with Python 3