Privilege Escalation

AWS privilege escalation abuses IAM policy misconfigurations to gain higher permissions than intended. Unlike traditional privesc, there is no kernel exploit involved: it is purely about policy logic and role trust relationships.

Common paths include creating new policy versions, attaching admin policies to your own user, assuming roles with weaker trust policies, and chaining Lambda or CloudFormation permissions to execute code as a more privileged role. Permission boundaries that look restrictive may still allow role chaining to bypass them.

Cross-account escalation is possible when role trust policies accept overly broad principals or lack external ID requirements.