How to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attacks?

Escalating privileges and controlling other accounts and networks is one of the adversaries' first steps in attacking your organization. Our guide teaches you how to prevent privilege escalation attacks.

If you don’t focus on your identity and access controls, then it’s inevitable that you will fall victim to a privileged escalation attack at some point in time. Bad actors work in very different ways these days. Old security solutions don’t work against them, and they can easily bypass traditional security measures. Having a strong data protection strategy and working outwards from there is the first step towards learning how to prevent privileged escalation attacks. Non-person identities can take on service principles, roles, access keys, functions, etc. Once the attacker lays the groundwork, they can capitalize on identities, data, and permissions.

Threat actors can spend days, weeks, and months inside your environment, and you won’t even notice them. They can expose or leak your sensitive data, and by the time they cause a data breach, until a third-party service provider informs you, it’s too late.

In this guide, you will learn how to prevent privileged escalation attacks and see how to address them.

What are Privilege Escalation Attacks?

In its simplest sense, a privilege escalation attack is when an adversary escalates account privileges.

It happens when a threat actor gains authorized access and administrative rights over your systems and networks. They can exploit security vulnerabilities, modify identity permissions, and grant themselves increased rights and capabilities. Attackers can move laterally through your networks and significantly change accounts, assets, and other resources.

Eventually, they move from limited permissions to having a sense of complete control. They go beyond becoming basic users and can turn their accounts into advanced users with additional rights. A successful privilege attack can escalate its privilege level and gain increased control. It can open up new attack vectors, target everyone on the network, and evolve attacks, from malware infections to large-scale data breaches and network intrusions.

How Do Privilege Escalation Attacks Work?

A privileged escalation attack can occur by adopting a low-level identity and exploiting permissions. The attacker moves laterally through your environment and gains additional permissions allowing them to cause irreparable damage. Many organizations neglect cloud security basics, leaving gaps they don’t notice. Companies also have difficulty gaining visibility into their internal users, identities, and permissions in complex cloud environments.

A privilege escalation attack will work by attempting to take over your account and existing privileges. It can vary from guest privileges limited to local logins only, to administrator and gaining root privileges for remote sessions. Privilege escalation attacks use methods like exploiting user credentials, taking advantage of system vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, installing malware, and even social engineering. Attackers gain entry within the environment, look for missing security patches, and use techniques like basic password stuffing and generative AI to find organizational flaws. They infiltrate once they find a way in and perform surveillance for an extended period.

Once they have the right opportunity, they will launch a broader attack. They can also clean up traces of their activities when they go undetected. Some of the ways they work are by deleting logs based on user credentials, masking source IP addresses, and eliminating any evidence that could indicate a presence of indicators of compromise.

Standard Methods Used in Privilege Escalation Attacks

There are different types of privilege escalation attacks. They are as follows:

1. Horizontal Privilege Escalation

This is where the attacker can evolve their privileges by controlling another account and misusing its original privileges. They can take over any privileges granted to the previous user and progress from there. Horizontal Privilege Escalation also happens when an attacker can gain access on the same permission level as other users but will use different user identities. An attacker who uses an employee’s stolen credentials can be classified as a Horizontal Privilege Escalator.

The goal of this attack is not to gain root privileges, but to access sensitive data belonging to other users with the same or similar privilege levels. Horizontal Privilege Escalation attacks exploit weak security practices on similar privilege or permission levels.

2. Vertical Privilege Escalation

This is a more advanced form of Privilege Escalation where the attacker will try to gain access from a standard user account and attempt to upgrade it. They will evolve their standard privileges to higher level privileges, such as going from a basic user to a super user or an administrator. This will give them unrestricted control over networks and systems. Over time, they will gain complete access to systems and be able to modify configurations, install software, create new accounts, and ban or denylist others. They can even delete data from the organization.

How to Detect Privilege Escalation Attempts?

You can detect privilege escalation attacks in the following ways:

• Observe how your employees interact with each other daily. If you suspect something fishy is happening and they suddenly have a negative attitude, it’s a sign that a privilege escalation attack is underway. Remember that not all privilege escalation attacks are the same, so we discuss social engineering-based ones here. An employee with a grudge can use their authorized access to do illegal activities across your entire infrastructure.
• Check for unusual login activities and see whether any files or applications have been accessed by accounts with low privileges for the first time. If your access tokens have been manipulated and you can see some signs, be wary of them.
• Look for SID history injection and process injection attacks. DC sync launches and shadow attacks also indicate privilege escalation attacks.
• Any unauthorized changes to services allowed to run with only administrative-level privileges are a standard indicator of privilege escalation attacks.
• Other system events, such as sudden application crashes or system shutdowns, application malfunctions, or threat actors who tamper with your kernel and OS, eventually lead to privilege escalation attacks.

Best Practices to Prevent Privilege Escalation Attacks

Here are the best practices you can use to prevent privilege escalation attacks:

• One of the best ways to prevent privilege escalation attacks is to understand and apply the principle of least privilege access. This cyber security concept enables limited access rights for all users. This means they only get the rights needed and those strictly required for their jobs.
• The principle of least privilege access will ensure that your day-to-day operations aren’t affected or slowed down. It also protects your system resources against various threats. You can use access controls, implement security policies, and ensure that your IT team controls which applications they run as local administrators without giving users local administrator rights.
• The second step in preventing privilege access attacks is keeping your software up to date. If you detect any flaws, patch vulnerabilities immediately across your operating systems. Conduct regular vulnerability scans and identify exploits before hackers take advantage of them.
• Monitor your system activities to ensure bad actors are not lurking in your network. If you detect any suspicious anomalies or behaviors during security orders, that’s a telltale sign.
• Ring-fencing is a widespread technique organizations use to limit what apps can do, whether they interact with other apps, files, data, or users. It is a barrier to preventing applications from stepping outside the organization’s boundaries.
• Also, educate your employees about the importance of security awareness. Make sure they can recognize signs of social engineering malware and phishing. Awareness is one of the best strategies for preventing privilege escalation attacks. It works best against the fight against hackers.
• Apply a zero-trust approach to cybersecurity by building a zero-trust network security architecture. Trust nobody. Verify always.
• Use AI threat detection technologies to run scans in the background when nobody else is paying attention. If humans miss any security flaws, automation tools will pick them up.

Real-World Examples of Privilege Escalation Attacks

A Microsoft-signed driver was used in a recent privilege escalation attack. Threat actors exploited a flaw in the Paragon partition manager for a bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver program. This zero-day vulnerability was involved in a ransomware attack, allowing attackers to compromise systems and evade detection. CVE-2025-0289 was an insecure kernel resource access vulnerability used to escalate privileges.

It executed denial-of-service attacks on targeted devices. The CERT Coordination Center warned that this vulnerability could be used on Windows devices, even if the Paragon partition manager was not installed.

The ransomware variant was not revealed and Microsoft couldn’t comment on the activity, or exploit any further. They refused to give any answers. It’s common for ransomware gangs to exploit vulnerable drivers and bypass endpoint detection and response mechanisms.

Kubernetes Privilege Attacks are another type of privilege escalation attack that occurs across clusters. They target containers and abuse system ports within attack chains.

Once adversaries gain access to higher-level privileges, they can exploit vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and abuse over permissive role-based access control policies. They may disrupt critical services, deploy malicious workloads, and gain total control over the entire Kubernetes cluster.

Conclusion

Preventing privilege escalation attacks begins with taking the necessary security measures to enforce strict access controls and doing regular security audits. If you are unaware of what’s going on in your organization, it can be difficult to pinpoint when a lateral movement occurs. Incorporate the best security awareness and training programs and ensure your employees attend them.

Don’t neglect the basics because that is the key towards learning how to prevent privilege escalation attacks. Also, consult security experts like SentinelOne for additional assistance.

FAQs

What is a Privilege Escalation Attack?

A privilege escalation attack occurs when a person gains more access rights than they already have, enabling them to control more of a system or network. It is like receiving a key to a place you shouldn’t be and then using it to unlock more doors.

How do attackers gain elevated privileges?

Attackers acquire higher privileges by exploiting system weaknesses or compromised credentials. They may discover a weakness in software or manipulate someone into giving them access. Then, they can roam and acquire more authority, usually without being noticed.

How can businesses prevent privilege escalation attacks?

Privilege escalation attacks can be prevented by restricting what a user can do. That is, provide people only with the necessary access to complete their tasks.

Keeping software updated and educating personnel on security is also a fine idea. Monitoring for suspicious behavior is also an option you can use.

What is the role of endpoint security in stopping privilege escalation?

Endpoint security blocks privilege escalation by protecting individual devices like computers and smartphones. It can identify and stop attacks before they spread. This is important because attackers typically start by targeting a single endpoint to gain access to a more extensive network.

How Organizations Can Respond to Privilege Escalation Incidents?

For a privilege escalation attack, organizations must react immediately. They must quarantine the infected areas, remove malware, and change passwords. You must review what happened so it won’t happen again. You can use security tools to help you.

What are the Types of Privilege Escalation Attacks?

There are two main types of privilege escalation attacks: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal attacks involve taking on the privilege of an equal-level user. Vertical attacks include moving from a regular user to a super user or administrator with greater access to networks and systems.