A malicious individual has managed to gain access to a user's system through a spear phishing email. The attacker extracted usernames and passwords from the local registry files and proceeded to obtain administrator privileges to continue the attack.

What term is given to an attack like this, in which a hacker manages to use a lower$-$access account to amass more permissions and gain access to resources that they shouldn't have?

A

Privilege escalation

B

Brute force

C

Downgrade attack

D

Memory leak