What is Privilege Escalation? | UpGuard

This is an overview of privilege escalation explaining how attackers gain higher privileges via vulnerabilities, design flaws, misconfigurations or misuse of accounts; it covers vertical and horizontal escalation, common techniques (access token manipulation, UAC bypass, using valid accounts), risks posed by successful escalation, and practical mitigations including enforcing least privilege, consistent patching, secure coding, access control, and restricting risky file-transfer tools.