- Privilege escalation is a type of attack
and it's also a type of vulnerability.
In a privileged escalation attack, it basically, you know,
entails the process of taking some level of access,
whether it's authorized or not,
and then achieving a even greater level of access.
Subsequently elevating the user's privileges.
An example is whenever an attacker gains user mode access
to a firewall, or server, or a switch, you know,
or router, or any infrastructure device,
and then uses privilege escalation of vulnerability
to gain access to the system and elevate their privileges
to let's say, admin access, right?
So in the case of a server, or a Linux server,
they can elevate their privilege to root,
or in the case of a router, or switch, or a firewall
they can elevate their privilege
to a privilege 15 admin user, right?
So that's how a privilege escalation attack actually works.
Now, you may ask, you know,
what is actually a code execution attack?
And that's whenever threat actors gain access
to a system but then may be able
to actually take several actions, right?
So the type of action will depend
on the level of access the attacker has or can achieve.
And it's actually based on the permissions granted
to that account compromised by that attacker.
Now, one of the most devastating actions available
is whenever an attacker, you know
has the ability to execute code,
and specifically to execute code remotely in a system.
So once you actually have access to the device,
and can execute code,
basically all bets are off from that point.
So code execution could result
in an adverse impact to the confidentiality, the integrity,
or the availability of a system, or the whole network.