Skip to main content

Privilege Escalation

Definition

Privilege escalation is an attack technique where an attacker elevates their access rights from limited permissions to administrator rights (root/admin).

There are two forms: vertical escalation (from regular user to admin) and horizontal escalation (gaining access to other users' accounts with equal rights).

Techniques: exploiting OS or application vulnerabilities, abusing misconfigured sudo rights, credential dumping (Mimikatz).

Related terms

Lateral Movement APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) PAM (Privileged Access Management)