Windows Privilege Escalation Part 1: Local Administrator Privileges

This post focuses on obtaining domain administrative privileges from a local administrator or domain user account. Once the initial steps have been taken to obtain local administrative access on a Windows operating system, the natural next steps are to gain domain user and domain administrative privileges.

A pentest shows Claude refuses to build an LSASS dumper, but local DeepSeek and uncensored Qwen models produce a working XOR-encrypted minidumper, making AI-assisted EDR evasion nearly effortless.

A Project Zero post explains how arbitrary file write bugs on Windows can be turned into local privilege escalation, walking through practical exploitation techniques for this bug class.

A Project Zero post in the Windows exploitation tricks series, showing how an arbitrary directory creation primitive can be escalated into arbitrary file read.

A bug in the Windows Secondary Logon service, fixed as MS16-032, leaks a fully accessible thread handle from a privileged process, enabling privilege escalation without memory corruption.

A Windows Terminal Server issue allowing dead processes to be resurrected, reported to Microsoft and fixed in MS15-111, demonstrated as an exploitable elevation of privilege.