How can salami attacks be used for privilege escalation?

Privilege escalation means gaining higher access rights than you’re supposed to have (for example, going from a normal user to an admin).

In a salami-style privilege escalation, the attacker does small, low-risk changes or abuses that individually don’t raise alarms, but gradually increase their control.

High-level idea (no technical steps):

• The attacker starts with limited access

• They repeatedly exploit minor weaknesses, such as:

  • Slight permission misconfigurations

  • Small logic flaws in access control

  • Overly permissive default settings

• Each action gives a tiny increase in capability

• Over time, these small gains combine into higher privileges

Simple Example (Non-technical)

Imagine a school system:

• A student is allowed to edit only their own profile

• Due to weak controls, they can:

  • Slightly change what fields they’re allowed to edit

  • Gain access to one extra option

  • Then another

• Eventually, those tiny permissions add up, and the student can access teacher-level features

Each step seems insignificant — that’s the salami approach.

Why Salami Attacks Are Dangerous for Privilege Escalation

• Hard to detect (each action looks normal)

•  Often ignored by monitoring systems

• Happens slowly over time

• Exploits accumulated weaknesses, not one big flaw

Defensive Perspective (Very Important)

To prevent salami-style privilege escalation, organizations focus on:

• Principle of least privilege (users only get what they truly need)

• Regular permission audits

• Change monitoring (even small changes matter)

• Strong access control validation

• Logging and anomaly detection