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Suppose I have an Admin account and a normal user account. There is some functionality that is only accessible to the admin only, like promoting other users. In this scenario, I captured a request from the admin when the admin is promoting other users and I changed admin cookie or token with the normal user and that action is performed using normal user cookie.

Is this considered "privilege escalation"?

I asked this because if admin-accessible functionality is performed using a normal user cookie successfully so in order to exploit this scenario normal users only needed to find an endpoint for that functionality.

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    " I changed admin cookie or token with the normal user " -- how did you do this? While logged in as admin? We need a little more detail here.
    – schroeder
    Mar 16 at 12:23
  • I assume he has credentials for both and used a web proxy to switch the cookie in the admin's request with his non-admin cookie. This is a scenario when testing web applications. If the operation was successful, then that is indeed a "Horizontal" privilege escalation.
    – mcgyver5
    Mar 16 at 18:33
  • @schroeder yes login with admin and perform some feature which is only accessible to admin and on that request change cookie or token with normal user yesterday
  • So, no, that's not necessarily "escalation". That's potentially a failed "de-escalation". I think your test is faulty.
    – schroeder
    yesterday

1 Answer 1

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Assumption: You are testing a web application and have credentials for both admin and regular user. You tried an admin-only operation with the session cookie of a non-admin.

If it went through, then yes, that is a Horizontal Privilege Escalation. You are correct that a normal user only needs to find the right endpoint to carry out the escalation and endpoint URLs cannot be considered secret in this case.

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  • can bug bounty programs give rewards for finding this bug? Mar 17 at 7:06
  • absolutely they can.
    – mcgyver5
    Mar 17 at 19:23

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