Ethical Hacking: Techniques, Tools, and Countermeasures, 4th Edition

Privilege Escalation

If a password is cracked, the probability of the account being one that has high-level access is somewhat low because these types of accounts tend to be well defended. If a lower-level account is cracked, the next step is privilege escalation—that is, increasing the privileges to a level at which wider access and fewer restrictions are in place, such as with the administrator account.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Every OS ships with a number of predefined user accounts and groups. In Windows, predefined users include the administrator and guest accounts. Because it is easy for an attacker to find information on the accounts that are included with an OS, you should take care to ensure that such accounts are secured properly, ...