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Privilege Escalation Defense for Software Engineers

7 chapters · 30 lessons

1. 1. Understanding Privilege Boundaries and Attack Surfaces

   4 lessons

   Map privilege levels, trust zones, and the attack surface created when services cross security boundaries.

2. 2. Common Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Patterns

   5 lessons

   Identify file handling, path traversal, service control, and token impersonation vulnerabilities that enable escalation.

3. 3. Designing Services with Least Privilege

   4 lessons

   Apply separation of duties, privilege dropping, and minimal permission scopes to service architecture.

4. 4. Validating Inputs Across Trust Boundaries

   5 lessons

   Implement robust validation, sanitization, and allowlisting for data crossing privilege boundaries.

5. 5. Secure File and Resource Handling in Privileged Services

   4 lessons

   Prevent race conditions, symlink attacks, and unsafe temporary file usage in elevated code.

6. 6. Threat Modeling for Privilege Escalation

   4 lessons

   Conduct structured threat analysis to identify privilege escalation risks in system and service designs.

7. 7. Hardening, Monitoring, and Incident Response

   4 lessons

   Apply runtime protections, audit logging, and detection strategies to limit and observe escalation attempts.