Privilege Escalation

Privilege escalation is an act of exploiting a bug, design flaw or configuration oversight in an OS or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user. Privilege escalation are of two types and they are :-

1. Horizontal Privilege Escalation

An attacker expands their privileges by taking over another account and misusing the legitimate privileges granted to the other user.

For example :- An attacker expands their privileges by taking over a privileged account and misusing the legitimate privileges granted to the user.

2. Vertical Privilege Escalation

An attacker attempts to gain more permission or access with an existing account they have compromised.

For example :- An attacker takes over a regular user account on a network and attempts to gain admin permissions.

Vertical privilege escalation requires more sophistication and may take the shape of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT).