https://github.com/exploitworks/escalatex
A powerful Linux privilege escalation scanner — a feature-rich and modern alternative to LinPEAS, built for speed, depth, and clarity.
https://github.com/exploitworks/escalatex
bash blackarch capability-checker container-security ctf-tools cybersecurity ethical-hacking infosec kali-linux kernel-exploitation linux penetration-testing pentesting privilege-escalation redteam security security-tools suidsploit sysadmin vulnerability-scanners
Last synced: 9 months ago
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A powerful Linux privilege escalation scanner — a feature-rich and modern alternative to LinPEAS, built for speed, depth, and clarity.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/exploitworks/escalatex
- Owner: ExploitWorks
- License: other
- Created: 2025-04-05T14:11:14.000Z (9 months ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-04-06T14:07:03.000Z (9 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-04-07T14:23:42.027Z (9 months ago)
- Topics: bash, blackarch, capability-checker, container-security, ctf-tools, cybersecurity, ethical-hacking, infosec, kali-linux, kernel-exploitation, linux, penetration-testing, pentesting, privilege-escalation, redteam, security, security-tools, suidsploit, sysadmin, vulnerability-scanners
- Language: Shell
- Homepage:
- Size: 316 KB
- Stars: 28
- Watchers: 1
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE.md
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# EscalateX
[](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
**A powerful Linux privilege escalation scanner for security professionals**
## 📖 About
EscalateX is a cybersecurity tool designed to identify privilege escalation vectors on Linux systems. Automating the process of finding potential vulnerabilities and a modern alternative to LinPEAS is the purpose of EscalateX.
The tool is currently in its early development phase. Bugs can and will occur while running the tool - therefore, please report your findings by sending me an email.
### Key Features
- ✅ **System Configuration Analysis**: Identifies misconfigurations in system settings
- ✅ **Privilege Abuse Detection**: Locates SUID/SGID binaries and dangerous capabilities
- ✅ **Filesystem Vulnerability Scanning**: Finds writable files in sensitive locations
- ✅ **Kernel Exploit Detection**: Discovers kernel vulnerabilities that could lead to privilege escalation
- ✅ **Container Security**: Evaluates potential container escape vectors
## 🚀 Installation
Quick setup in three simple steps:
```bash
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/reschjonas/EscalateX.git
# Navigate to the directory
cd EscalateX
# Make it executable
chmod +x escalatex.sh
```
### 📋 Requirements
Runs on most Linux distributions with:
- Bash 4.0+
- Standard Unix utilities (find, grep, ls, etc.)
- The `timeout` command (optional but recommended)
## 💻 Usage
### Basic Operation
Simply run the script:
```bash
./escalatex.sh
```
### Advanced Options
```bash
# Run a comprehensive scan (longer but more thorough)
./escalatex.sh --thorough
# Target specific checks only
./escalatex.sh --only system_info,suid_sgid
# Use elevated privileges for deeper analysis
./escalatex.sh --multi --password yourpassword
# Maximum depth scan for critical systems
./escalatex.sh --extreme
```
### Command Line Options
Click to expand all options
#### Core Options
- `-a, --all` - Run all checks (thorough mode)
- `-t, --thorough` - More comprehensive but slower scan
- `-x, --extreme` - Maximum depth scan for critical systems
- `-o, --only CHECKS` - Run specific checks (comma-separated)
- `-d, --dir PATH` - Check a specific directory
- `-m, --multi` - Use multiple threads (default)
- `-s, --single` - Single-threaded mode
- `--threads N` - Set number of threads for multithreaded mode
#### Output Options
- `-q, --quiet` - Minimal output
- `-n, --no-color` - Turn off colors
- `-w, --wait` - Pause between check groups
#### Advanced Options
- `-p, --password PWD` - For sudo operations
- `-S, --sudo-pass` - Prompt for sudo password for privilege escalation attempts
- `-D, --debug` - Verbose logging
- `-h, --help` - Show help
## 🔍 What It Checks For
System Information
- OS details and kernel version
- Security configurations and patch status
- Hardware info and resource usage
- Filesystem mounts and permissions
- Boot configuration and services
User & Permissions
- Current user privileges
- User enumeration and group memberships
- Password policy issues
- Sudo rules that could be abused
- Home directory permissions
Privilege Escalation Vectors
- SUID/SGID binaries (especially exploitable ones)
- Files with dangerous capabilities
- Custom privilege escalation paths
- Container security issues
Filesystem Issues
- Writable files in sensitive locations
- Misconfigured home directory permissions
- PATH manipulation vulnerabilities
- Wildcard injection opportunities
## 📊 Sample Output
Click to see sample scan results
```
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ System Information ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
╔════════[ Operating System Information ]════════╗
[+] OS: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (ubuntu)
[+] Kernel version: 5.11.0-27-generic
[+] Architecture: x86_64
[+] Running on physical hardware
╔════════[ Hardware Information ]════════╗
[+] CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz (8 cores)
[+] Memory: 6453MB / 16000MB (40% used)
[+] Swap: 2048MB / 4096MB (50% used)
...
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SUID/SGID Binaries and Capabilities ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
╔════════[ SUID/SGID Binaries ]════════╗
[*] Looking for SUID binaries (might take a while)...
[+] Found 35 SUID/SGID binaries:
[!] /usr/bin/sudo [Owner: root]
→ Purpose: Execute commands as root with proper permissions
[!] /usr/bin/pkexec [Owner: root]
→ Purpose: Execute commands as another user with policykit
[CRITICAL] /usr/bin/python3 [Owner: root]
→ Exploitable: python -c 'import os; os.execl("/bin/sh", "sh", "-p")'
...
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Scan Summary ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
[*] EscalateX scan completed at Wed Feb 14 14:32:18 EST 2024
[*] Remember to check the most promising privilege escalation vectors highlighted in red
Thank you for using EscalateX!
```
## 🗺️ Roadmap
### Future Development Plans
| Feature | Status | Description |
|---------|--------|-------------|
| 📑 **Report Generator** | Planned | Create comprehensive HTML/PDF reports with findings and remediation recommendations |
| 🛠️ **Single Script Builder** | Planned | Build-Script to compile all modules into a singular script |
| 🔍 **Service Version Scanning** | Planned | Identify outdated software versions running as services |
| 🌐 **Real-time CVE Collection** | Planned | Connect to vulnerability databases to map identified software versions to known CVEs |
| 🛠️ **Automatic Vulnerability Exploiter** | Considering | Optional module to automatically exploit identified vulnerabilities |
## 🧩 Custom Modules
You can extend EscalateX with your own custom modules:
How to create custom modules
1. Create a script in the modules directory
2. Use this basic structure:
```bash
#!/bin/bash
# Title: My Custom Check
# Description: What this thing does
check_something_interesting() {
print_subtitle "My Interesting Check"
# Your check logic here
print_info "Checking something..."
# Found something worth noting
print_warning "Hmm, that's interesting"
# Found something bad
print_critical "This is definitely exploitable"
}
# Main function
custom_checks() {
print_title "My Custom Stuff"
# Run your checks
check_something_interesting
# Pause if wait mode is on
wait_for_user
}
```
3. Add your module to loader.sh
## ⚠️ Important Warning
**This is a security tool. Use it responsibly.**
- 🔒 Only run it on systems you own or have permission to test
- 🚨 Some checks might trigger security alerts or monitoring
- ⚙️ Be careful in production environments
- 🤝 Don't be a jerk - never use this for unauthorized access
## 📝 License
[](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
This project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) - see the [LICENSE](LICENSE.md) file for details.
This means you can freely use, modify, and distribute this software, as long as:
- You give appropriate credit to the original author
- You don't use it for commercial purposes
For more information, visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
## 👥 Contributing
Contributions are welcome and appreciated! To contribute:
1. Fork the repository
2. Create a branch (`git checkout -b cool-new-feature`)
3. Commit your changes (`git commit -m 'Added some cool feature'`)
4. Push to your branch (`git push origin cool-new-feature`)
5. Open a Pull Request
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