TechKnowSurge
TechKnowSurge Catalog Videos Exploit Chaining
VideoSecurityFree

Exploit Chaining

Exploit chaining occurs when attackers combine multiple vulnerabilities, none of which may be severe enough on its own, to gain unauthorized access to a system. Understanding how these vulnerability chains are constructed is essential for recognizing and defending against complex, multi-stage attacks.

⚑ Complete this video to capture a CTF flag worth 1 point.

About this video

Exploit chaining, also referred to as vulnerability chaining, describes the practice of combining two or more security weaknesses to achieve an outcome that none of the individual flaws could produce alone. Attackers who cannot find a single critical vulnerability in a target system will often identify several lower-severity weaknesses and sequence them strategically, using the access or condition created by one exploit to enable the next. The result is a compound attack that can be significantly more dangerous than any of its components in isolation. The distinction between a vulnerability and an exploit is important here. A vulnerability is the underlying weakness, a flaw in code, configuration, or design that creates exposure. An exploit is the action taken to leverage that weakness. The two concepts are closely related, which is why the terms exploit chaining and vulnerability chaining are used interchangeably, but recognizing the difference matters when analyzing, documenting, and remediating security issues. Documented attack campaigns provide clear evidence of how prevalent this technique is in practice. The ProxyShell attack chain, for example, combined multiple tracked CVEs to compromise Microsoft Exchange servers, and similar multi-vulnerability sequences have been observed in attacks targeting ServiceNow environments. Studying these real-world cases through CVE records and threat intelligence sources reinforces why defense-in-depth strategies are critical: a control that stops one link in a chain can be enough to neutralize an entire attack sequence.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Exploit Chaining

Key terms

Vulnerability
A weakness in a system, application, or process that can be exploited by a threat actor.
Exploit
A piece of software or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability to gain unauthorized access or cause harm.
Exploit Chaining
The practice of combining multiple vulnerabilities and their corresponding exploits in sequence to compromise a system that would otherwise resist a single-vulnerability attack.
Privilege Escalation
An attack that exploits vulnerabilities to gain higher-level access than originally authorized.

Topics

Exploit Chaining Vulnerability Chaining Penetration Testing Offensive Security Cybersecurity Attack Vectors

Transcript

An adversary might not find that one magic vulnerability that they can exploit to really get into a system. But what they might find is multiple vulnerabilities that, if used together, they can gain access into a system. And we call this exploit chaining, or vulnerability chaining. So let's get into exploit chaining.

Exploit chaining is when we are chaining exploits together, that we have more than one exploit that we're utilizing to make a system vulnerable.

The rocket analogy

So let me use my rocket analogy to explain exploit chaining. So we have a vulnerability here. There's some sort of stress fracture in here. But that's okay, because we've got multiple measures in place to really protect this rocket. We also have this little bracket right here that helps secure the whole infrastructure of this. And also we have this extra outside protection.

But the problem is that this outside protection has a little bit of a flaw in it as well. So we've got another vulnerability. Once again, that flaw wouldn't really be that big of a deal by itself, but now we have two vulnerabilities. Plus, we've got a loose bolt on this little strap that's right here. So now we have three. Maybe none of those, or even two of those, wouldn't be that big of a deal, but all three of them create this exploit chain that we can leverage that might affect the durability or the integrity of this rocket.

Vulnerabilities versus exploits

Now, exploit chaining is the same thing as vulnerability chaining. There's a correlation between vulnerabilities and exploits. They are two different things. A vulnerability is what is vulnerable, what is making it vulnerable here. So in this case right here, it's a little stress fracture. But exploitation is the act of leveraging that. So exploitation is more of an action, versus vulnerability is more of a thing. But it's kind of like two sides of the same coin. So exploit chaining is the same thing as vulnerability chaining.

Real-world examples

I jumped on a site here, SOCRadar, because they show some really great examples of exploit chaining. In fact, they're very specific. So here, if I scroll down, we can see some examples. These right here are the codes for specific common vulnerabilities and exploitations. So this is the year that it is, and this is the vulnerability number that they found in that year.

So what this is showing us is that this ProxyShell attack chain is using several recorded vulnerabilities to carry that out. And same thing with this one, this ServiceNow attack — they're showing several vulnerabilities that were used to carry out that type of attack. So we can see many different examples of where they are using multiple vulnerabilities to carry out these attacks.

About TechKnowSurge

TechKnowSurge builds IT and cybersecurity professionals through hands-on, concept-first training built around real understanding — not memorization. Free interactive tools, structured programs, and 25+ years of real-world experience, all in one place.

Explore free tools and programs →