What is Privilege Escalation?

This guide walks you through:

• What privilege escalation is and how it works
• The difference between horizontal and vertical escalation
• Real-world examples like Cisco, Mailchimp, and Tesla
• Detection methods and red flags
• 5 proven prevention strategies to shut down escalation

Along the way, you’ll see how Securden’s Unified PAM platform helps detect, block, and prevent privilege escalation risks—without complicating your workflows.

Let’s find out how you can stop miscreants from climbing the privileged access ladder.

What is Privilege Escalation

Attackers start with limited access (say, a user account) and find ways to acquire administrative capabilities through security gaps. They exploit software, configurations, or human behavior vulnerabilities to elevate their permissions beyond intended limitations.

A forgotten software update, a weak password, or a misconfigured setting can act as a stepping stone. Once they’re in, hackers might steal sensitive data, install malware, or even take complete control of systems. Hackers don't typically gain full system control in one swoop—they start with a small foothold and gradually climb the permission ladder until they reach their target.

You face two main risks: either outsiders breaking in to escalate privileges, or insiders abusing the legitimate access they already have. Both scenarios can lead to devastating data breaches, system compromises, or compliance violations if left unchecked.

How Does Privilege Escalation Work?

Privilege escalation isn't just one technique—it's a collection of methods attackers use to gain higher-level permissions. Here’s the breakdown of the five different stages in which privilege escalation attacks usually take place:

• Initial access: An attacker first needs some level of system access. They may gain access by exploiting a vulnerability, using stolen credentials, or through social engineering tricks.
• Discovery phase: Once inside, they'll scout around to find potential weaknesses. Attackers would then check your configuration files, look for unpatched software, examine permission structures, and hunt for sensitive credentials left in accessible locations.
• Exploitation: After identifying weaknesses, attackers execute their privilege escalation technique. They do it by exploiting a software bug, taking advantage of misconfigured permissions, or leveraging design flaws in the operating system.
• Persistence establishment: With higher privileges secured, attackers typically create backdoors or alternate access methods to maintain their elevated status, even if the original vulnerability gets patched.
• Lateral movement: Armed with administrative privileges, attackers can move laterally and vertically across your network, compromising additional systems and collecting more sensitive information.

Why It’s Dangerous

Some privilege escalation attacks can happen almost instantly through automated tools, while others involve patient attackers who spend weeks gradually increasing their foothold without triggering alarms.

Your organization faces major risks when regular security practices fall through the cracks, like delayed patching, poor password management, or overlooking access control reviews. The attack path often follows the line of least resistance, targeting wherever your security system is weakest.

What Are the Main Types of Privilege Escalation?

Privilege escalation attacks fall into two primary categories: horizontal and vertical. Each represents a different approach to gaining unauthorized access within your systems.

Aspect	Horizontal Privilege Escalation	Vertical Privilege Escalation
Direction of movement	Sideways (across the same privilege level)	Upward (to a higher privilege level)
Permission change	Same permission level, different user scope	Higher permission level
Example	User A accessing User B's files with identical privileges	Standard user gaining administrator rights
Primary risk	Unauthorized access to peer data/resources	System-wide compromise and control
Common attack methods	Session hijacking, CSRF attacks, broken access controls	Buffer overflows, kernel exploits, and unpatched vulnerabilities
Detection difficulty	Often harder to detect (looks like legitimate user activity)	Sometimes easier to spot (unusual privilege operations)
Business impact	Data leakage and privacy violations	Complete system compromise, data destruction
Defense focus	Strong authentication, session management	Strict access controls, regular patching

Horizontal Privilege Escalation

Horizontal privilege escalation occurs when an attacker maintains the same access level but gains unauthorized access to another user's resources or accounts at that same level.

In this scenario, the attacker doesn't climb up the permission ladder—they move sideways. Here’s an example, imagine a bank employee who can only access their own customer accounts suddenly gaining access to other employees' customer portfolios without permission.

The danger lies in the expanded reach rather than elevated power. While the attacker doesn't gain admin rights, they can access a wider range of sensitive data or resources that weren't meant for them.

Vertical Privilege Escalation

Vertical privilege escalation happens when an attacker upgrades their access level from a lower-privileged user to one with higher permissions.

This attack involves moving up the permission hierarchy. Consider a standard user who exploits a vulnerability to gain administrator or root privileges. The attacker literally climbs the access ladder, acquiring capabilities to modify system settings, install software, or access secured data.

Vertical escalation poses significant risks because it grants the attacker administrative powers to make system-wide changes, potentially compromising your entire infrastructure.

Techniques include:

• Token impersonation (Windows)
• Sudo/su misconfigurations (Linux)
• Privilege escalation malware (e.g., rootkits or bootkits)
• Kernel-level exploits (like DirtyPipe or GameOver(lay))

Why Understanding Both Types Matters

Both attack types require different security approaches, but they often work together in sophisticated attacks. When an attacker compromises your security chain, they might start with horizontal movement to find vulnerable accounts before attempting vertical escalation to gain root privileges or administrative control. This attack chain is often the backbone of ransomware deployments, data exfiltration, or persistent backdoor installation.

How Do Privilege Escalation Attacks Occur?

Privilege escalation attacks unfold when attackers exploit gaps in systems, processes, or human behavior to climb from limited access to unauthorized control. These breaches often follow predictable patterns, exploiting software vulnerabilities, applications, or security configurations.

Here are the six most common pathways or privilege attack vectors that miscreants use for privilege escalation.

1. Credential Theft and Abuse

Attackers use phishing, rainbow table attacks, or password exposure to hijack accounts. Stolen usernames and passwords retrieved through these techniques help gain entry into your network security. Once inside, they might escalate horizontally (e.g., accessing another user’s data) or vertically (e.g., exploiting a standard user account to gain admin capabilities).

Example: Cisco’s 2022 breach began when an attacker phished an employee’s personal Google account and used stored VPN credentials to move internally.

2. Exploiting Software Vulnerabilities

Outdated software or unpatched systems are low-hanging fruit. Attackers target known flaws in your operating system (like Windows services or Linux kernel components) or applications to execute malicious code. For example, a buffer overflow vulnerability might let them inject arbitrary code, granting root privileges or admin rights.

3. Abusing Misconfigured Permissions

Weak configuration settings are a goldmine. If a Windows user account has unnecessary access to system files or registry keys, attackers can modify these to run elevated commands. Similarly, even in Linux environments, improper sudo access or lax file permissions might allow unauthorized privilege elevation.

4. Malware Deployment

Attackers often deploy specialized malware like keyloggers, remote access trojans (RATs), or rootkits to perform privilege escalation. Once installed, these malicious programs can capture keystrokes to steal credentials, modify system processes, or exploit local vulnerabilities from within.

5. Social Engineering

Through carefully crafted social engineering attacks, hackers manipulate people into breaking security protocols. It may involve impersonating your staff to request password resets, creating convincing phishing emails that harvest admin credentials, or even using pretexting to convince help desk staff to grant increased system access and escalate privileges. These human-centered attacks often succeed where technical defenses are strong.

6. Exploiting Insider Access

Compromised accounts—whether through malicious insiders or negligent users—can bypass many security controls. A disgruntled employee with legitimate access might abuse their privileges to install malware or exfiltrate sensitive data.

A single misconfigured service or weak password can cascade into a breach affecting the entire network. Other techniques like token manipulation, security context exploitation, and DLL hijacking provide additional avenues for attackers determined to elevate their privileges.

It might be hard to believe, but even top-notch security systems can fall prey to sophisticated attackers combining multiple methods.

4 Real-world Examples of Privilege Escalation Attacks

While theory may only take you so far, sometimes the best lessons come from revisiting real-world breaches. Here are four real-world breaches tied to privilege escalations. Let’s see how they took place and how they could have been avoided.

1. Mailchimp Breach (2022–2023)

Mailchimp experienced two major breaches within six months, in August 2022 and January 2023. Attackers used social engineering tactics to compromise employee credentials, gaining unauthorized access to internal support tools and customer accounts.

Marking the second such hack in six months, attackers accessed an internal customer-admin tool and exposed data for 133 accounts. The repeated nature of the attacks showed persistent exploitation of weak internal access controls.

Prevention Tips:

• You can blunt social engineering by enforcing phishing-resistant MFA (e.g., hardware tokens): running regular security awareness training, and applying strict access controls on admin tools.

2. Cisco Breach

In late May 2022, Cisco faced a cybersecurity attack where a threat actor with ties to cybercrime gangs like Lapsus$, UNC2447, and Yanluowang phished a Cisco employee’s personal Google account. They stole saved browser credentials, and then voice-phished them into approving MFA pushes—gaining VPN access and elevating privileges for lateral reconnaissance.

Cisco reported that the attack had no impact whatsoever on sensitive customer data, sensitive employee information, or Cisco's intellectual property. They removed the actor from their environment and made an unusually transparent disclosure praised by security professionals.

Prevention Tips:

Strict privileged access management, including frequent credential rotation and secure storage using enterprise password managers, could have prevented attackers from leveraging stolen credentials.

Additionally, continuous monitoring for unusual access patterns and enforcing the least-privilege principle would reduce the impact of compromised accounts.

“Actors stealing credentials out of browsers isn't new. They've been doing it for as long as I've been working in security. Storing anything in a browser is risky, regardless of what the credential is. That's why you use password managers as a primary mechanism to help protect against it.” — Nick Biasini, Global outreach lead at Cisco Talos.

3. Tesla Insider Breach (2023)

In May 2023, two former Tesla employees leaked 100 GB of internal files to the German newspaper Handelsblatt, exposing over 23,000 documents, including customer complaints about Autopilot safety.

But, that’s not all, beyond safety feedback, the insider breach also exposed personally identifiable information (PII) of over 75,000 Tesla employees—names, addresses, salaries, bank details, and even CEO Elon Musk’s Social Security number.

The breach exposed Tesla to potential GDPR fines up to $3.3 billion (4 % of revenue) and prompted the company to file lawsuits, seize devices, and alert European data authorities.

Prevention Tips:

Applying granular access controls to limit data access strictly to necessary roles, combined with real-time session monitoring of data access and transfer activities, could have prevented unauthorized data exfiltration.

Immediate revocation of access upon employee departure and regular audits of privileged accounts are critical to minimizing insider threat risks.

4. Salt Typhoon Campaign (2023)

Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored group, exploited unpatched critical vulnerabilities in Cisco IOS XE devices (CVE-2023-20198 and CVE-2023-20273) to gain unauthorized access to multiple U.S. telecom providers.

Exploiting the vulnerability allowed them to intercept private communications and sensitive law enforcement data, impacting major companies like AT&T and Verizon over several months.

Prevention Tips:

• Timely application of security patches and updates: would have taken care of the exploited vulnerabilities.
• Regular vulnerability assessments, third-party penetration testing, and automated threat intelligence monitoring: could have identified risks earlier, enabling faster remediation before attackers gained access.

Each of these incidents demonstrates the classic hallmarks of privilege escalation attacks.

• Mailchimp: Social engineering turned employee credentials into admin power grabs.
• Cisco: Stolen passwords became launchpads for lateral movement and data theft.
• Tesla: Overly permissive access let an insider escalate from user to data smuggler.
• Salt Typhoon: Unpatched vulnerabilities acted as stepping stones to infiltrate high-value systems.

What these cases collectively teach us is that privilege escalation rarely happens in isolation— it's typically part of a larger attack chain that begins with seemingly minor access and builds toward critical system compromise.

Detecting these attacks requires vigilance at every step of the privilege ladder, which brings us to our next section, detecting privilege escalation attempts and stopping them in their tracks.

How to Detect Privilege Escalation Attempts?

Detecting privilege escalation attempts before they succeed can mean the difference between a minor security incident and a catastrophic breach. Here’s how to shut down privilege escalation attempts before they ever gain momentum:

Audit Log Analysis

Set up comprehensive logging of all privilege-related activities across your systems. Look for unusual patterns like repeated failed login attempts to administrative accounts, sudden changes in access patterns, or unexpected credential usage outside normal business hours.

Why it matters: Privilege escalation often begins with small anomalies buried in routine activity. Catching them early can disrupt the escalation chain.

Behavior Analytics

Implement User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) to establish baseline behaviors for accounts and flag anomalous activities.

When an account that typically only accesses HR systems suddenly tries to access financial databases or when a user attempts to run unusual commands with elevated privileges, these behavior changes often signal an escalation attempt in progress.

Why it matters: Most attacks involve misuse of valid accounts. UEBA detects behavior changes, not just signature-based threats.

Permission Change Monitoring

Implement real-time alerts for permission changes, especially those granting administrative access. Track changes to group memberships (particularly admin groups), unexpected sudo rights assignments, or modifications to access control lists.

Legitimate permission changes typically follow change management procedures, while unauthorized changes often happen abruptly during privilege escalation attacks.

Why it matters: Many attacks involve changing a regular account into an elevated one quietly. If you can detect that permission jump as it happens, you can stop the breach before it spreads.

Network Traffic Analysis

Monitor network traffic for suspicious command and control communications. Privilege escalation malware often "phones home" to attackers. Unusual outbound connections—especially those using non-standard ports or encrypted tunnels—may indicate compromised systems. These connections can be a sign that attackers are leveraging your environment for escalation.

Why it matters: Escalated privileges are a launchpad for lateral movement. Detecting this movement is critical for stopping attacks mid-flight.

Process Monitoring

Track process creation and termination, focusing on processes running with elevated privileges. Unexpected processes spawning with system or root privileges, or legitimate processes being hijacked to run malicious code, are common indicators of privilege escalation techniques in action.

Why it matters: Attackers often hijack trusted processes or spawn new ones with root/system rights. These are clear signs of vertical escalation.

While we know detecting privilege escalation attacks is easier said than done, it’s still one of the most optimal routes to safeguard your system. Catching privilege escalation attempts in their early stages can dramatically reduce your attack surface.

But, how do you get started?

With the right PAM tools at your disposal, of course.

Securden's Unified PAM combines detection capabilities with automated responses, helping you identify suspicious privilege patterns before they become breaches—all from a single, manageable platform. Instead of juggling multiple security tools, consider how a consolidated approach saves you time while closing security gaps that attackers love to exploit.

Still unsure? Here’s what our users have to say about Unified PAM.

“We have been utilizing and implementing Securden over the past year, and this product has provided us with a way to allow our end users to run programs and features with administrative credentials without being a full-blown administrator on the machine. This has been a great way to minimize the security risk in our environment.”

- Jacob V.,
System Engineer

5 Best Practices to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attacks

While detecting and eliminating the attempts does have its own charm, prevention takes it a step further. Cracking down on all the security gaps in your system, you can reduce your attack surface and breathe a sigh of relief. Here are the five best prevention practices to get you started.

Implementing the Least Privilege Principle

Enforce the principle of least privilege and grant users only the minimum privileges needed to perform their job functions. Standard user accounts should remain standard—not everyone needs administrator access to perform daily tasks.

Review access rights periodically and revoke unnecessary permissions that could become an entry point for privilege escalation attacks.

Regularly Updating and Patching Systems

Establish a rigorous patch management program covering Windows environments, Linux systems, applications, and firmware. Prioritize security patches that specifically address privilege escalation vulnerabilities, particularly for internet-facing network devices.

Your vulnerability management workflow should include automated scanning, risk assessment, and verification testing after patches are applied to ensure software components remain protected.

Utilizing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Deploy MFA for all privileged account access, especially for administrative functions that could modify Windows registry settings or command prompt capabilities. Combine something users know (password) with something they have (security token) or something they are (biometrics).

Apply stricter MFA controls for highly privileged accounts, potentially requiring multiple authentication factors before permitting system-critical changes that could allow users to execute commands with system-level access tokens.

Employing Privileged Access Management (PAM) Solutions

Implement a comprehensive privileged access management solution like Securden to control, monitor, and audit privileged account usage. These specialized tools can enforce checkout procedures for privileged accounts, automatically rotate credentials, and provide session recording to monitor user activity for signs of malicious intent.

PAM solutions create a secure barrier between users and privileged accounts, minimizing direct access to sensitive credentials that could grant elevated access to your entire network.

Hardening System Configurations

Develop and maintain secure baseline configurations for all system types. Remove unnecessary services, close unused ports, and disable features not required for business operations, including disabling Windows User Account Control bypasses that might allow arbitrary code execution.

Implement application whitelisting to block unauthorized software that could be used for privilege escalation. Regularly audit configurations against security benchmarks to ensure running processes have only sufficient permissions for their intended functions.

Addressing these fundamental security measures significantly reduces your vulnerability to privilege escalation attacks. As threats evolve, however, even organizations with strong preventive controls need specialized tools to manage privileged access effectively.

Bottom Line: Prevention is easier and cheaper than response. With these five best practices in place—and a PAM platform like Securden monitoring privilege activity—you can shut down escalation paths before attackers even begin their climb.

What better solution to turn to than Secuden’s very own Unified PAM?

How Can Securden Help in Mitigating Privilege Escalation Risks?

After examining real-world breaches like Cisco and Mailchimp, it's clear that privilege escalation often succeeds due to gaps in access controls.

Since you're already briefed on how to detect and prevent privilege escalation attacks, let's focus on how Securden's Unified PAM locks down these vulnerabilities.

Just-in-Time Access Control

Securden breaks the privilege escalation chain by granting elevated permissions only when needed, with automatic expiration. Just-in-time access control prevents attackers from finding persistent paths to gain administrative access across your environment.

Session Monitoring and Command Filtering

The platform records all privileged activities in real-time, alerting security teams when users attempt to modify access tokens or execute code that could compromise Windows security controls. Suspicious sessions can be terminated before attackers can establish persistence.

Credential Vault with Automatic Rotation

Securden's encrypted vault prevents credential theft by ensuring users never see actual passwords for sensitive accounts. Automatic password rotation closes the window of opportunity even if credentials are somehow compromised.

Privilege Discovery and Right-Sizing

The platform identifies excessive permissions across your operating systems and helps implement least privilege principles based on actual needs, eliminating overlooked accounts that attackers could exploit.

Application-to-Application Credential Security

Securden eliminates hard-coded credentials in applications and scripts—common targets for privilege escalation—by securely injecting credentials only when needed.

Organizations looking to close privileged gaps need more than point solutions—they need a single, affordable platform built for real-world operations. And that’s exactly where Securden steps up to the mantle with its advanced cybersecurity solutions.

While it’s already clear how Securden can help you in shutting down all kinds of cybersecurity attacks, you might be wondering what sets it apart from the other PAM tools.

De-escalate Your Privilege Concerns With Securden

Privilege escalation isn’t just a technical vulnerability — it’s a strategic blind spot. Attackers exploit overlooked permissions, dormant accounts, and overly broad access rights to quietly move up the chain and take full control.

And they don’t need to rush.

Many breaches unfold over weeks or months, starting from a single compromised account or misconfigured setting. By the time red flags surface, the damage is done — credentials leaked, systems hijacked, data exfiltrated.

Securden flips the script.

With Unified Privileged Access Management (PAM), Securden closes the exact gaps privilege escalation depends on — even in complex, distributed environments. It provides:

• Real-time visibility into who has access, when, and why
• Automated guardrails to enforce least privilege and session controls
• Fast response tools to detect and kill suspicious privilege abuse in real time

Whether you’re protecting domain controllers, database servers, or DevOps pipelines, Securden helps you enforce zero standing privilege and zero trust at every access point.

No more relying on spreadsheets or siloed tools to manage privileged accounts. No more uncertainty about what’s exposed and who’s using it.

You don’t need to wait for the next breach to act.

Start your Securden free trial today

Securden, a leader in the privileged access governance space, addresses these vulnerabilities with a unified approach. See how quickly you can:

• Eliminate hardcoded credentials
• Rotate and vault passwords automatically
• Enable JIT access controls
• Monitor all elevated activity — without slowing down your teams

Start your free trial of Securden's Unified PAM today and see how quickly you can close privilege gaps across your environment.

Privilege escalation attacks represent one of the most dangerous threats to modern organizations. They exploit the gaps between your identity management controls and your privileged access strategies, creating dangerous blind spots where attackers can silently escalate privileges.