What is local privilege escalation?
A security flaw that lets someone who already has limited access to a computer gain full administrator control over it.
In plain English
Most computers separate ordinary users from the administrator, often called “root”. An ordinary account can run programs; root can change anything, read every file and switch off security tools. Local privilege escalation is a bug that lets code already running as an ordinary user climb up to root. The attacker needs a foothold on the machine first, which is why it is called “local”.
An example
OpenAI says it built an automated system that found 948 local privilege-escalation flaws in the Linux kernel, the core software behind most servers and Android phones, and generated patches for them.
Watch out
These bugs are rarely the start of an attack, so they can look low-priority. They are usually the second step: phishing or malware gets someone in with limited rights, then a privilege-escalation flaw turns a small intrusion into total control of the machine. Applying operating system updates promptly closes most of them.