Privilege Escalation Privilege escalation is the attempt by an attacker who already holds some level of access to widen their rights in order to move through the network. Escalation is rarely the first stage — it comes after entry through, say, an ordinary user account or a compromised service. It takes the attacker from the crack they slipped through to control of the whole system. There are two directions: vertical escalation, from an ordinary user to domain administrator, and horizontal, moving from one account to another user's resources at the same level of rights.