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Getting Shells on z/OS with Surrogat Chains (Encore)

Jake Labelle

Jake Labelle presents advanced exploitation methodologies for IBM z/OS mainframes, mapping out complex RACF SURROGAT permission graphs to elevate to SPECIAL.

Summary

Mainframe Identity and Access Complexity

IBM z/OS mainframes powering global financial infrastructure utilize intricate RACF authorization tables containing decades of accumulated user permissions.

Unraveling Multi-Step SURROGAT Class Delegations

Jake Labelle details how unprivileged user accounts can traverse nested batch job submission privileges to execute unauthorized JCL jobs as privileged IDs.

Constructing Automated Exploitation Graphs

Demonstrating automated scanning tools illustrates how red teams can ingest RACF database dumps to compute optimal escalation paths directly to mainframe root.

Auditing Mainframe Security Controls

System administrators are provided with practical remediation queries to prune orphaned SURROGAT profiles and harden z/OS access controls.

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