The privilege escalation poll

Have you ever seen a client-side attack attack on a desktop (e.g. drive-by install) invoke a privilege escalation vulnerability? i.e. seen admin access gained when the attack was on a limited account?

If so:
- Was a payload involved?
- Was the system up to date?
- Were you doing something generally considered risky when the attack occurred?

Edit: Sorry, forgot to make this a poll. D'oh!

 

Never on my system. But many times, yes. I've seen basic stuff like bypassing UAC when Windows 7 had just come out. There was an Adobe sandbox bypass being used actively in the wild not long ago.

That's it though. I don't do computer cleanup stuff anymore, so I don't see much malware in the real world as a consequence. I obviously don't get infected either, as I take considerable steps to make that difficult.

 

I'll admit I've never seen a privilege escalation attack. Actually the only times my systems have been compromised (that I know of) involved running as admin.