Privilege escalation: Explotation of a bug or configuration issue in an operating system.

Never give SUDO rights to the programming language compiler, interpreter or editors, including vi, more, less, nmap, perl, ruby, python, gdb.
Identify and block software executed through search order hijacking, using whitelisting tools like AppLocker.
Backdoor into the environment which was known to administrators however, not documented, and is discovered by an attacker.
Fully manage the identity lifecycle, including provisioning and de-provisioning of identities and accounts to make sure there are no orphaned accounts to hijack.
Open Vulnerability Assessment Language —an information security community effort to standardize how exactly to assess and report upon the device state of computer systems.

Predicated on automation and brute force checks, they can enumerate valid accounts for a resource and attempt future privileged attacks predicated on common passwords, reused passwords, or others gleaned from previous attacks.
Based on the privileges of an individual or application executing with the vulnerability, the escalation and effectiveness of the attack vector can transform.
For example, an operating-system vulnerability might have two very different sets of risks once exploited depending on whether it’s executed by way of a standard user versus an administrator.
As a standard user, the exploit may fail, could possibly be limited by the user’s privileges, or it could gain full administrative usage of the host .
However, if an individual is leveraging a domain administrator account or other elevated privileges, the exploit could gain permissions to the entire environment.
Privileged escalation of credentials from the standard user to administrator can happen using a selection of techniques described in this website.

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explains developing strong cybersecurity defenses against hackers to protect your network from compromise.
Make and Impersonate Token– In this method, an adversary has a username and password, but the user isn’t logged onto the machine.

• Utilize the “Run as administrator” functionality to raise any process initiated by an individual.
• This could be bypassed if the user created a specially crafted directory with an organization sticky bit “g+s” and develop a table.
• Common privileges include viewing and editing files or modifying system files.
• In this phase, an attacker wants to have a strong grip on the system and seeks methods to heighten the privileges, either to review the system further or perform an attack.
• Therefore, vulnerability management, risk assessments, patch management, and privileged access management are so important.

This calls for planting a malicious DLL with the same name as a legitimate DLL, in a location which is searched by the machine before the legitimate DLL.
Often this will be the current working directory, or in some instances attackers may remotely set the working directory to an external file volume.
The machine finds the DLL in the working folder, thinking it is the legitimate DLL, and executes it.
Spear phishing – a sophisticated form of phishing custom-made for a specific privileged user or group of users.
Spear phishing can allow attackers to dominate highly privileged accounts like those owned by system administrators, finance employees, or senior executives.
Spyware – spyware performs surveillance on a device, for instance by monitoring a user’s activity on the keyboard or granting usage of the screen, microphone, or camera.

Make-me-admin Holes Within Windows, Linux Kernel

With horizontal privilege escalation, malicious actors remain on a single general privilege level but can access data or functionality of other accounts or processes that needs to be unavailable to them.

Although there is no way to fully secure your environment against hackers and malicious insiders escalating privileges, it is possible to thwart attackers by minimizing your threat exposure and spotting cyber threats in their early stages.
You should also measure the risks to your sensitive files and do something to secure data in accordance with its value.
Taking these steps proactively may help you avoid data loss, system disruption, compliance failures along with other negative consequences.
Privilege escalation is a common threat vector for adversaries, which allows them to enter organizations’ IT infrastructure and seek permissions to steal sensitive data, disrupt operations and create backdoors for future attacks.
In other cases, attackers exploit software vulnerabilities, or use specific techniques to overcome an operating system’s permissions mechanism.
Depending on the UAC protection level set on the computer , certain Windows applications can elevate privileges or execute some operating-system functions, like COM, without prompting the user.