What Types of Privilege Escalation Exist?

Privilege escalation attacks are broadly categorized into two categories based on how the attacker extends the reach of its attack. These include horizontal and vertical privilege escalation.

What is the Impact of Privilege Escalation Attack on an Organization?

Privilege escalation remains a critical concern for an organization‘s web application security. The attacks are no longer restricted to the network periphery but intrude inside the organization‘s database to gain access to sensitive customer/organization internal data. Privilege escalation is often the first stage of a crucial complicated attack. The ultimate goal of the attack is always to gain elevated and unauthorized access to an organization‘s critical resources and compromise security. Impacts might range from accessing confidential data, installing malware or malicious code, and/or completely hijacking the organization‘s systems.

Privilege Escalation - The Ultimate Prevention Guide

Preview

Most modern applications follow a multi-tenant architecture designed to be used by multiple users with varying access privileges. A cyber attack usually begins by compromising one of the standard user’s access to gain entry into the system. The next step usually involves elevating access to privileged accounts and resources kept away from a standard user. This form of a security breach is commonly known as a privilege escalation that facilitates illicit access to escalated rights and permissions beyond what the user is entitled to.

Privilege escalation is one of the most commonly leveraged mechanisms in a modern cyber attack chain that results in unauthorized access to an entire system.

This guide delves into how privilege escalation works, various severity levels, standard attack techniques, and best practices to prevent such attacks in modern web applications.

Privilege Escalation Prevention Guide

Learn how to detect and prevent Privilege Escalation and secure your web assets.

In this whitepaper:

Preview