What is privilege escalation? Types, examples & defenses

After an attacker gains a foothold, they rarely land with full control. Privilege escalation is how they go from a low-privileged account to powerful access such as local administrator, SYSTEM, or root, which unlocks deeper compromise.

Vertical vs horizontal privilege escalation

• Vertical escalation raises your privilege level, for example user to root.
• Horizontal escalation keeps the same level but accesses another user's resources, for example reading another account's data.

How does privilege escalation work?

Common techniques include:

• Abusing misconfigured sudo rules or SUID binaries on Linux.
• Exploiting unquoted service paths or weak service permissions on Windows.
• Stealing tokens or credentials cached in memory.
• Exploiting a kernel or driver vulnerability.
• Finding hardcoded passwords or writable scripts run by privileged processes.

Enumeration tools such as LinPEAS, WinPEAS, and BloodHound help map escalation paths, and the techniques map cleanly to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Why it matters

Privilege escalation is a key link between initial access and full domain compromise, and it frequently precedes lateral movement across a network. Defenders counter it with least privilege, patching, and strong monitoring.

How to practice privilege escalation hands-on

On Purple Edge the penetration-testing learning hub provides vulnerable Linux and Windows machines where you can hunt and exploit real escalation paths from a low-privileged shell up to full control.