Privilege escalation attacks allow threat actors to gain unauthorized access to systems and elevate their permissions. These attacks typically aim to compromise powerful user accounts through exploiting vulnerabilities in access controls or software bugs. Attackers first gain initial access, then look for ways to bypass account authorization and elevate their privileges, with the goal of obtaining unlimited administrator access. Common methods involve taking advantage of weak security on lower-level accounts or finding flaws in how access is managed.

1. SRM Institute of Science and Technology 1
Dr.J.Jospin Jeya
Assistant Professor
SRMIST
Privilege Escalation

2. Privilege Escalation
•A Privilege Escalation Attack is a technique in which a
threat actor gains unauthorized access through a susceptible
point and then elevates access permissions to carry out a
full-blown attack.
•Such threat actors can be external hackers or insiders who
exploit vulnerabilities such as inadequate or broken access
controls or system bugs to compromise a user account
•. Privilege escalation attacks typically aim to gain a powerful
level of permission and control the entire system.

3. •In the case of horizontal privilege escalation, the actor takes
advantage of lower-level or unprivileged user accounts with weak
security policies.
•Vertical Privilege Escalation
•Also known as Privilege Elevation refers to an attack where the
attacker elevates access privileges beyond defined account
permissions.
•Such attack vectors typically start with the goal of gaining
accounts with unlimited administrator privileges, such as System
Administrator on Windows or root access on Linux/Unix machines
Privilege Escalation Types

4. attack vendors include Web Application
Servers and Application Programming Interfaces.
•To gain initial access, attackers authenticate themselves to
the system by bypassing user account control or obtaining
credentials.
•Beyond this, attackers try to find various loopholes in
account authorization to gain a level of access to more
sensitive data.
How Does Privilege Escalation Work