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Privilege Escalation

Privilege escalation is the process attackers use to gain higher-level access on a system after an initial compromise. This coverage explains the techniques adversaries employ to move from limited access to full control over a target resource.

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About this video

Initial access to a network or server rarely grants an attacker the permissions required to execute a full attack. Privilege escalation is the technique adversaries use to bridge that gap, leveraging vulnerabilities and misconfigurations on a compromised system to obtain a higher level of access than they were originally granted. This is a critical phase in many attack chains, occurring after the initial breach and before the attacker can fully achieve their goals. A common real-world scenario involves an attacker who has gained a foothold on a Linux web server but is operating under a restricted user account. By identifying and exploiting weaknesses on that server, the attacker works to elevate their permissions to root level, effectively removing all barriers to what they can do on the machine. Understanding how privilege escalation works — both from an offensive and defensive standpoint — is essential knowledge for security professionals responsible for protecting networked systems and servers.

What you'll learn

Explain the concept of privilege escalation and why adversaries use it to gain elevated access on a compromised system

What's covered

Privilege Escalation

Initial Access Limitations
- Access Not Always Sufficient
- Locked Down Resources
- Web Server Example
Escalation Process
- Exploit Server Vulnerabilities
- Elevate to Higher Privilege
Target Access Goals
- Root Access on Linux
- Full System Control

Key terms

Privilege Escalation: An attack that exploits vulnerabilities to gain higher-level access than originally authorized.
Vulnerability: A weakness in a system, application, or process that can be exploited by a threat actor.
Exploit: A piece of software or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability to gain unauthorized access or cause harm.
Least Privilege: A security principle that grants users and systems only the minimum access rights needed to perform their functions.
Access Control: A security mechanism that restricts access to resources based on policies, roles, or identity.

Topics

Privilege Escalation Cybersecurity Ethical Hacking Access Control Threat Actors Operating Systems Penetration Testing

Transcript

Privilege Escalation

Many times when we have access to a server, it's not necessarily the right access to carry out an attack. There are many times when an adversary gets into a network and then needs to escalate their privilege.

When a hacker gains access to a system, many times they don't have the right access to that system. There are a lot of things that are locked down, for instance, on a web server. So if they gain access to that web server, then perhaps what they need to do is escalate the privileges. There are mechanisms and ways that they can get onto that server to exploit different vulnerabilities on that server, to escalate the privilege and bring it to the next level.

In our example, as a web application, one thing that they might do is want to log into maybe some sort of Linux box, a Linux web server, as root, and then they can just do anything that they want on that box.

So, privilege escalation, pretty straightforward: when the adversary is trying to escalate their privilege on a server or some sort of resource.

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