Asking nicely for root command execution and getting it
It's completely unrelated, but it reminds me of the Metasploit UAC bypass for Windows, called "ask".<p>Metasploit just pops up a UAC prompt asking for escalation. Yes or no. Over and over and over again.<p>On any machine logged into by a local administrator user, if they're the standard kind of careless user, they'll just click yes without thinking and they're owned. If they're cautious, and on a box where UAC presents as a modal dialog, as per its default config, this essentially locks the user out of the OS until they click "yes"... and they're owned.<p>On an assessment we did at a local 200-seat business where they ran with admin rights on their local boxes, we got about a 90% escalation rate. The other 10% of people got up from their desks and went to ask the IT guy, which we considered a "pass" in that scenario.<p>Interesting stuff.