What is Permission Elevation?

Understanding Permission Elevation in Cybersecurity and Antivirus Solutions: Risks, Consequences and Strategies for Control

Permission Elevation, also known as Privilege Escalation, is a critical concept in the realm of cybersecurity and antivirus. It is the act or process through which a user or system acquires credentials or abilities that effectively afford more control over or access to parameters or parts of the system they wouldn't typically be allowed. This is sometimes a necessary procedure for admins and users to execute specific tasks that need those enhanced privileges. it gains prominence in the cybersecurity context when executed illegally, turning into an alarming vulnerability leveraged by adversaries to achieve malicious intents.

Permission Elevation can be categorized primarily into Vertical and Horizontal Privilege Escalation. Vertical Privilege Escalation, or privilege elevation, involves a lower privilege user account trying to gain higher privilege. This typically happens when a regular user, with limited system functionalities, succeeds in gaining similar permissions to those of an administrator. Then there's Horizontal Privilege Escalation where there's no change in the privilege level, but a user rounds up unauthorized functionalities. This occurs when a user assumes another's identity, most often in contexts where users possess similar access levels and functionalities.

One of the most well-known methods for Permission Elevation is the Buffer Overflow method. Here, the attacker sends more data than what the buffer can hold, making the excess data overflow, thus corrupting or changing the data already in the buffer. With careful manipulation, an attacker can gain control of the system through the overflow.

Operating systems have attempted to control escalated permissions—Microsoft introduced User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista, which requests approval when apps try to make changes. UNIX systems have the "sudo" (superuser do) command to allow programs to act as a Superuser or another user.

Within the grim context of threat landscape, Permission Elevation is often utilized by malware to broaden its sphere of influence within an infected system. Standard malware relies on permissions of the originally infected user account to spread and propagate. If the malware can escalate privileges to administrator-level, the extent of potential damage grows, enabling voracious behavior like shutting down system processes, altering or deleting data, creating new accounts with full user rights, and manipulating system security policies and security context.

Berry malware is a typical example of seeking to escalate privileges by exploiting a known vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) NCrypt and Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Such attack scenarios gain attention because antivirus solutions or security modules with auto-defense mechanisms effectively restrict any unauthorized process from seeking to increase its privilege.

Organizations usually employ a strategy of principles of least privilege (PoLP) that involves providing users with only those privileges they absolutely need to carry out their work to mitigate the risk of escalation. these methods can provide a false sense of security and make antivirus programs and system administrators complacent, as many of them operate under the user's privilege level, not the system.

Damage potential of Privilege Escalation grows multifold if the villainous code succeeds in escalating its privilege to root or even kernel-level, for the executed malware could now alter the OS fundamentals and mutate the system behavior as it prefers.

To spot and halt such threats, effective countermeasures include utilizing modern comprehensive security solutions, proactive patch management, endpoint detection, and the use of just enough administration (JEA) without sticking to system-level effectiveness.

Lastly, it must be acknowledged that permission elevation is a sinister trick craftily utilized by adversaries acting as a potent catalyst that amplifies warnings or minor damages into overwhelming proportions. Therefore, it should feature as a prime concern demanding a holistic approach to cybersecurity and resilience planning.

Permission Elevation FAQs