Topics / #privilege-escalation

Privilege-escalation projects on GitHub

Techniques and checklists for escalating privileges on compromised systems.

As of , the most-starred Privilege-escalation projects on GitHub are PayloadsAllTheThings (81.8K stars), awesome-pentest (27.5K stars) and Awesome-Hacking-Resources (17.5K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 15 Privilege-escalation repositories with 215.5K stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 17 was ghostlock-app, with +41 stars in a day.

15Projects
215.5KStars in total
+158Stars in a day
Browse in the catalog →github.com/topics/privilege-escalation ↗

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 17

+41

ghostlock-app

YuKongA/ghostlock-app · ★ 2K

GhostLock is a one-tap Android app that runs the CVE-2026-43499 kernel exploit to grant uid 0 (root) on a matching vulnerable kernel, optionally loading a KernelSU-style module afterward.

+33

PayloadsAllTheThings

swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings · ★ 81.8K

A massive curated collection of payloads, bypass techniques, and exploitation methodology for web application security testing, pentesting, and CTF challenges.

+26

Claude-Red

SnailSploit/Claude-Red · ★ 7.6K

claude-red is a curated library of offensive security skills for the Claude Skills system: structured SKILL.md files that prime Claude with expert-level methodology for one attack surface each, from SQLi to shellcode.

+16

awesome-pentest

enaqx/awesome-pentest · ★ 27.5K

A curated collection of penetration testing and offensive-security resources: tools, books, courses, conferences and practice targets for authorized security testing.

The all-time top

15 projects · by stars

  1. #1 · swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings

    PayloadsAllTheThings

    A massive curated collection of payloads, bypass techniques, and exploitation methodology for web application security testing, pentesting, and CTF challenges.

    81.8K
  2. #2 · enaqx/awesome-pentest

    awesome-pentest

    A curated collection of penetration testing and offensive-security resources: tools, books, courses, conferences and practice targets for authorized security testing.

    27.5K
  3. #3 · vitalysim/Awesome-Hacking-Resources

    Awesome-Hacking-Resources

    A curated collection of hacking, penetration testing and AI red-teaming resources — courses, YouTube channels, CTF platforms and guides, picked to make you better at offensive security.

    17.5K
  1. 4

    PENTESTING-BIBLE

    14KblaCCkHatHacEEkr/PENTESTING-BIBLE

    A curated catalog of over 200 numbered links to pentesting articles, bug bounty write-ups, cheat sheets and other security lists — a reading collection, not software.

  2. 5

    GTFOBins.github.io

    13.8KGTFOBins/GTFOBins.github.io · YAML

    GTFOBins is a curated list of Unix-like executables that can be abused to bypass local security restrictions in misconfigured systems — for example, binaries a restricted user can turn into a root shell.

  3. 6

    PowerSploit

    13.1KPowerShellMafia/PowerSploit · PowerShell

    PowerSploit is a collection of PowerShell modules that penetration testers use during all phases of an assessment, covering code execution, persistence, privilege escalation, credential theft, exfiltration and reconnaissance on Windows systems.

  4. 7

    hacktricks

    12.6KHackTricks-wiki/hacktricks · JavaScript

    A free, open wiki of hacking tricks and techniques — everything the author has learnt from CTFs, real-world apps and security research, organized into a browsable reference with 12.5k+ GitHub stars.

  5. 8

    Red-Teaming-Toolkit

    10.8Kinfosecn1nja/Red-Teaming-Toolkit

    It is a curated list of cutting-edge open-source security tools for red teamers and threat hunters, covering the full attack lifecycle from reconnaissance to exfiltration.

  6. 9

    Claude-Red

    7.6KSnailSploit/Claude-Red · Python

    claude-red is a curated library of offensive security skills for the Claude Skills system: structured SKILL.md files that prime Claude with expert-level methodology for one attack surface each, from SQLi to shellcode.

  7. 10

    awesome-android-root

    5.2Kawesome-android-root/awesome-android-root · Markdown

    A community-curated knowledge base covering over 650 root apps, Magisk/KernelSU/APatch modules, and LSPosed (Xposed) modules for rooted Android devices, plus step-by-step rooting guides.

  8. 11

    dirtyfrag

    5.1KV4bel/dirtyfrag · C

    Dirty Frag is a proof-of-concept Linux kernel local privilege escalation exploit that chains two page-cache write vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-43284 and CVE-2026-43500) to obtain root on major Linux distributions.

  9. 12

    copy-fail-CVE-2026-31431

    4.1Ktheori-io/copy-fail-CVE-2026-31431 · Python

    This repository is a technical writeup and proof-of-concept for CVE-2026-31431, a 9-year-old Linux kernel local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability found by Theori's AI vulnerability research tool, Xint Code.

  10. 13

    ghostlock-app

    2KYuKongA/ghostlock-app · Kotlin

    GhostLock is a one-tap Android app that runs the CVE-2026-43499 kernel exploit to grant uid 0 (root) on a matching vulnerable kernel, optionally loading a KernelSU-style module afterward.

  11. 14

    Erosion

    247jailbreakdotparty/Erosion · Swift

    Erosion is an iOS customization toolbox that uses the bad_query sandbox escape exploit to apply tweaks on supported iOS/iPadOS versions, no traditional jailbreak required.

  12. 15

    UniRoot

    232kuuky29/UniRoot · Kotlin

    UniRoot is a one-tap rooting app for Samsung Galaxy devices. It ships a new unprivileged kernel exploit (DirtyFrag, CVE-2026-43284) that roots the phone with a single button press, plus an older CVE-2026-43499-based exploit with per-device profiles, and it automatically re-roots the device on every boot.

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