Privilege Escalation

Privilege Escalation

Attaining higher privileges on a system allows hackers to perform far more dangerous actions. Once an intruder has system access as previously described, they often seek super user or root privileges to install Trojan code or create backdoors for future covert access. Privilege escalation is often acquired via operating system or application vulnerabilities such as buffer overflow attacks. Once a system has been compromised in this manner, it is completely at the control of an attacker.