According to a recent report, over 80% of data breaches involve privilege misuse and infiltrations. Privilege escalation allows bad actors to take control of sensitive system resources and potentially your entire cyber infrastructure. This guide explains what privilege escalation is, how it happens, what to look for, and what to do to safeguard your system.
What Does Privilege Escalation Mean?
In the context of cyberattacks, privilege escalation is when attackers are able to elevate their access level, potentially obtaining administrator rights in the system. Threat actors can log into the network with lower-level rights, often using stolen credentials, and grant themselves high-level permissions. Successful privilege escalation exploits let criminals access sensitive data, change system controls, encrypt files, install malware, or create new accounts.
Vertical Privilege Escalation
With a vertical privilege escalation attack, the goal is to gain high-level or administrator access. Attackers start by obtaining a legitimate user ID and password, often using social engineering like pretexting emails.
Next, the threat actors take advantage of exploits, vulnerabilities, or phishing attacks to elevate their privileges. For example, using a low-level employee’s real email account, the intruder can ask IT helpdesk personnel for temporary permission to access files, change a password, or install a program.
Horizontal Privilege Escalation
In horizontal privilege escalation, the goal is to move laterally through system resources. The attacker has access to the same permissions as the compromised user. This allows for:
- Information gathering: Attackers can study the system from the inside, obtain the names and positions of other employees and administrators, and look for network vulnerabilities.
- Social engineering: Having access to a real email account from inside the system is valuable for follow-up phishing attacks, ransomware installation, and financial schemes.
- Attack planning: With mid-level permissions or phishing, the attacker may be able to take control of multiple user accounts. Horizontal movement can make it harder to successfully lock down the threat.
In many cyberattacks, threat actors use horizontal and vertical privilege escalation methods together.
How Does a Privilege Escalation Attack Work?
The techniques used in privilege escalation vary, making it hard to protect large systems.
Social Engineering
Some privilege escalation attacks rely on phishing to obtain higher-level access. It’s easier for a cybercriminal to target low-level employees because they usually have less experience, fewer security protections, and more attack surfaces.
From there, the attacker can access corporate email, company software, internal apps, and some data storage. Managers are less suspicious of emails that come from inside the organization. All it takes is one IT helpdesk technician to grant dangerous levels of access to someone skilled in malware.
Exploits
Attackers also take advantage of vulnerabilities in software, APIs, or networks. Just in 2023 and 2024, there were more than 170 zero-day exploits. These flaws affected Microsoft Windows, Google Chrome, Android, iOS, and Apple Safari.
A recent (2025) server vulnerability allows harmful code injection into user session files. Skilled attackers can use this flaw to obtain root-level permissions and execute system commands.
Configuration Errors
Privilege escalation can happen because of cybersecurity mistakes, such as misconfiguring user settings for software, granting mid-level employees too much access, or forgetting to remove access privileges from old user accounts. There have even been cases of admins making sensitive company databases (with passwords) public instead of private.
Insider Threats
Attackers sometimes skip the subterfuge and go straight to the source. Using financial incentives, threats, or blackmail, they may have IT workers create a new user account with administrator access directly. Alternatively, disgruntled employees can be the ones behind privilege escalation attacks in the first place.
What Is a Real-World Example of Privilege Escalation?
Many zero-day exploits and software flaws involve vertical privilege escalation.
Microsoft Zero-Day Attack
The 2023 hack on Microsoft systems by Russian group Midnight Blizzard involved privilege escalation. Taking over a legacy tenant account, the hackers used admin access in an OAuth app to steal corporate emails. This info allowed for a follow-up data breach in 2024, where the group stole source code and confidential emails between Microsoft and federal agencies.
Operating System Privilege Exploits
Both the Windows and Linux operating systems have vulnerabilities that can contribute to privilege escalation. Security patches cover these risks, but new updates can sometimes expose the flaws unwittingly.
Linux exploits typically revolve around Sudo, a tool that gives command permissions to low-level users. Vulnerabilities essentially bypass the need for admin access to execute administrator-level commands.
Many Windows privilege escalation flaws attempt to bypass user account control settings to obtain root access. Others rely on DLL hijacking, infecting programs with malicious code when they run.
What Are the Signs of Privilege Escalation?
Detecting privilege escalation attacks isn’t easy, at least not when dealing with an experienced threat actor. Manual defenses are often ineffective, especially with AI allowing cybercriminals to impersonate the writing style or voice (easily obtainable from social media) of coworkers.
Digital tools can help with detection, however:
- Endpoint security software flags suspicious user behavior
- Network monitoring tools identify and/or block traffic from outside IP addresses
- Vulnerability scanning reveals unpatched security issues, configuration problems, and potential exploits
- Antimalware tools warn against harmful programs and websites, or flag certain user actions
These programs can check an employee’s usual behavior against current actions or compare movements with common behavior patterns in privilege escalation attacks.
Can You Prevent Privilege Escalation Attacks?
Privilege escalation is so variable that trying to create a walled garden would be like attempting to keep mosquitoes out of your backyard with a fence. Instead, effective countermeasures revolve around multi-layer security, continuous scanning, and risk mitigation.
The Principle of Least Privilege reduces the harm from low-level account breaches because base employees have next to zero rights. Multifactor authentication makes taking over secondary or elevated accounts more difficult.
Consistent security patching reduces the risk of software exploits. Risk awareness training and anti-phishing courses should be obligatory at your organization.
How Do You Mitigate Internal and External Privilege Escalation Threats?
To prevent ransomware attacks and protect your organization’s sensitive data, your team must understand how to prepare for privilege escalation in cybersecurity. Continuous monitoring and automation can mitigate risks significantly. Learn more about Compyl’s advanced risk management and cybersecurity solutions today.
