What is Privilege Escalation?

Privilege Escalation

Privilege Escalation refers to a type of cyber attack in which an attacker exploits vulnerabilities or misconfigurations to gain higher levels of access or permissions on a system than they are initially granted.

The attacker starts with limited access (such as that of a regular user) and seeks to elevate their privileges to those of an administrator or superuser, enabling them to perform actions like installing malware, altering system configurations, or accessing sensitive data.

There are two main types of privilege escalation:

• Vertical Privilege Escalation: In this type, the attacker moves from a lower privilege level to a higher one, such as from a normal user account to an administrator or root user. This type of attack is more severe because it gives attackers control over the entire system.
• Horizontal Privilege Escalation: In this case, the attacker gains access to another user's account with the same privilege level, such as moving from one regular user account to another. While it doesn't provide administrative access, it can still be harmful if it allows the attacker to access sensitive data or impersonate other users.

Privilege escalation often results from system vulnerabilities, improper access control settings, outdated software, or weak passwords. Preventing privilege escalation requires implementing strong access controls, regular security patches, and least-privilege policies, where users only have the minimum necessary access rights for their roles.

Security monitoring and logging can also help detect attempts to escalate privileges.