Part 4/12:
This deception allows the attacker to perform actions typically restricted to physical sessions, such as rebooting the system, mounting drives, or modifying system states, despite not having actual physical access. While this does not immediately grant root privileges, it sets the stage for escalation.
From Deception to Privilege Escalation
The first flaw does not directly escalate privileges but tricks system services into granting elevated rights based on session assumptions. The core issue is that the system trusts environment variables used within PAM, which an attacker can control.