Dictionary · Hacking Techniques and Methodologies
Privilege Escalation
Post-access · Advanced
Gaining more access than an account or process was given. Defenders prevent it with patches, limited admin rights, and alerts on new privileged accounts.
A person or program starts with ordinary rights and ends up with administrator rights. The defensive signals are unexpected admin accounts, new privileged services, and missing patches.
Example: An alert fires because a normal user account was added to the local administrators group. That change is reviewed as possible privilege escalation.
Common misconception
- The term is the outcome, not a recipe. Learning the name does not include steps for raising access.