PT0-002 Attacks and Exploits Practice Question
A penetration tester gains a low-privilege shell on a Linux server. The command 'sudo -l' reveals that the user can run /usr/bin/less as root without a password. Which tool would the tester likely use to escalate privileges?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
GTFOBins
GTFOBins documents that less can be used to escalate privileges via the ! command when run with sudo.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Metasploit
Why it's wrong here
Metasploit is a full-featured exploitation framework that includes modules for remote exploitation, payload generation, and post-exploitation. Although it has some local privilege escalation exploits, it is not specifically designed to catalog or exploit sudo misconfigurations in the way GTFOBins does. Using Metasploit for this task would require you to manually match your situation to a module, whereas GTFOBins provides a direct lookup of binaries that can be abused via sudo or setuid.
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Hashcat
Why it's wrong here
Hashcat is a GPU-accelerated password recovery tool used to crack password hashes such as those found in /etc/shadow or Windows SAM files. It is not a privilege escalation tool, and even successfully cracking a password does not exploit a misconfiguration—it simply provides credentials that may or may not lead to elevated access. GTFOBins focuses on abusing the permissions of already-present binaries, which is a completely different technique from credential cracking.
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Chisel
Why it's wrong here
Chisel is a tunneling tool that uses HTTP to create encrypted channels, allowing an attacker to pivot from a compromised host to other network segments. It excels at lateral movement and establishing SOCKS proxies, but it has no capability to escalate a low-privilege local user to root. GTFOBins, by contrast, lists local binaries that can be exploited to gain elevated privileges directly, which is the immediate need after obtaining a low-privilege shell.
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GTFOBins
Why this is correct
GTFOBins is a curated database of Unix binaries that can be exploited to bypass local security restrictions, such as misconfigured sudo permissions, SUID bits, or Linux capabilities. When you have a low-privilege shell, you enumerate what commands you can run with sudo (via sudo -l) and then search GTFOBins for those binaries to find tested one-liners that spawn a root shell, read sensitive files, or perform other privileged actions. It is the authoritative reference for this scenario because it provides exact command sequences that leverage trusted system binaries.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PT0-003 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PT0-003 exam.