Glossary
PRIVILEGE ESCALATION
defined.
Techniques an attacker uses to gain higher-level permissions on a system or network — vertical (root from user) or horizontal (peer account).
A–Z
Techniques an attacker uses to gain higher-level permissions on a system or network — vertical (root from user) or horizontal (peer account).
On Linux: misconfigured sudoers, world-writable cron entries, capabilities (CAP_SYS_ADMIN), kernel CVEs. On Windows: token impersonation, service permissions, DLL hijacking, UAC bypass. In cloud: IAM PassRole chains, see our AWS IAM escalation post.
See our web application penetration testing, API security testing, network penetration testing, and cloud security audit services for how we test for and defend against this class of issue.
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