Privilege escalation via Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability is described as an attack that includes getting unauthorized access to elevated rights or privileges above what a user is expected or entitled to. This attack might be carried out by either an external threat actor or an insider. Privilege escalation is a critical stage in the cyberattack chain that often involves the exploitation of a privilege escalation vulnerability, such as a system defect, misconfiguration, or insufficient access controls. In this article, I’ll go over how privilege escalation works, the primary attack vectors involved, and the crucial privileged access security measures you can put in place to avoid or mitigate it.
Privilege escalation attacks are broadly classified into two types: horizontal privilege escalation and vertical privilege escalation. These terminologies, which are frequently used interchangeably, can be distinguished as follows:
- Horizontal privilege escalation is the process of getting access to the rights of another account—human or machine—that has identical privileges. This is referred to as a “account takeover.” Typically, this would include lower-level accounts (i.e. ordinary user), which may be vulnerable to compromise. An attacker’s sphere of access with identical rights expands with each additional horizontal account hacked.
- Vertical privilege escalation, also known as a privilege elevation attack, involves extending a user’s, application’s, or other asset’s privileges/privileged access beyond what it already possesses. This includes progressing from a low degree of privilege to a greater level of advantage. Vertical privilege escalation may necessitate a number of intermediary steps (e.g., executing a buffer overflow attack, etc.) to bypass or override privilege controls, exploit flaws in software, firmware, or the kernel, or obtain privileged credentials for other applications or the operating system itself. According to the Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report 2021, elevation of privilege vulnerabilities accounted for 44 percent of all Microsoft vulnerabilities in 2020.
ZOFixer.com security scan helps to find this vulnerability in your software and server, you can easily use it by registering on our website and activating the 30-day trial.