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Re:“Most serious” Linux privilege-escalation bug ever is und... by tptacek on Thursday October 20, 2016 @10:24PM (#12757753)
The point is that code execution is almost always remote root, because lots of bugs like this exist. Also: most engineers overestimate the relative value of root vs. simple inside-the-VPC code execution, which is almost always gameover anyways.
Re:“Most serious” Linux privilege-escalation bug ever is und... by patio11 on Friday October 21, 2016 @03:05AM (#12758670)
Thomas has elaborated on this a few times over the years, but to elaborate for people who weren't around for those conversations: if you can make an HTTP request from inside the firewall, which probably doesn't require root, you can pivot the attack to a variety of internal services which are not designed with security in mind. That could let you e.g. reconfigure networking appliances, grab credentials to internal or external services from DevOps-y credential stores, grab all manner of business secrets, pivot to direct SQL access to the DB laundered through e.g. internal analytics dashboards or admin tooling, etc.