Talk:Privilege escalation

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[edit] Another meaning?

I've also heard this term dealing with the fact that many of the individual privileges of a superuser can be used to obtain the others, including the ability to run in kernel mode.

For example, if a Windows program is granted SeDebugPrivilege - the right to debug any process in the system regardless of owner - it can escalate its privilege further by leveraging SeDebugPrivilege. It can use that privilege to open a running LocalSystem (akin to UNIX "root") process, such as winlogon.exe, and inject its own code, escalating its privilege to LocalSystem.

Similarly, the SeTakeOwnership privilege, which allows taking ownership of files without explicit permission, can be used on the Registry to change the Administrator password.

Many Windows privileges allow this sort of escalation, so their closure really ought to be considered a single privilege level. That's the route UNIX took.

-- Myria 07:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Horizontal" vs "Vertical" privilege escalation

I've cleaned up the content for this concept a bit, but I dispute that there's a such thing as "horizontal privilege escalation", and not just because the term is a bit of an oxymoron.

"Horizontal" escalation means obtaining unauthorized impersonation rights (I know web apps never call it "impersonation"). Impersonation, a capability built in to a variety of reference monitors (including Unix, Win32, and databases) is an elevated privilege. "Horizontal" escalation is just a use case for a specific, limited form of "vertical" privilege escalation.

The content here is valuable; I'm not advocating that we strike it. I'm just saying that we probably shouldn't muddy it with concepts like "vertical and horizontal".

--- tqbf 02:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree the content is valuable but the term itself is confusing. Zeroday (talk) 13:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)