Privilege Escalation

Privilege escalation occurs when an attacker exploits a vulnerability, design flaw, or misconfiguration to gain elevated access beyond what they're authorized for. Vertical escalation means gaining higher privileges (e.g., moving from a standard user to administrator). Horizontal escalation means gaining access to another user's resources at the same privilege level.

Attackers typically start with limited access — perhaps through a phished user account — and then use privilege escalation to gain the administrative access needed to access sensitive data, install persistent backdoors, or move freely through the network.