Problem Statement
Explain what privilege escalation is in the context of ethical hacking and why it is dangerous.
Explanation
Privilege escalation is the process where an attacker (or tester) starts with limited user access and then finds a way to elevate that access to higher privileges — such as administrator or root. It is dangerous because once administrative rights are obtained, the attacker can disable security controls, create new accounts, extract sensitive data or maintain persistence indefinitely. In a pentest interview, being able to explain both vertical (user→admin) and horizontal (user→another user account) escalation and give example methods (e.g., unpatched kernel exploit, weak SUID binaries, service mis-configuration) shows depth.
