System and method for determining privilege escalation attack pathways using software analysis

A system for determining privilege escalation attack pathways, comprising:

• a computing device comprising a memory and a processor;
• a plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory of, and operating on the processor of, the computing device, wherein the plurality of programming instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the computing device to:
• search one or more databases to identify information about one or more vulnerabilities of each software application residing on the computing device;
• wherein the information comprises the level of privilege needed to execute the one or more vulnerabilities, and new vulnerabilities and privilege levels made possible by the successful execution of the one or more vulnerabilities;
• construct a cyber-physical graph comprising privilege escalation attack pathways, the cyber-physical graph comprising nodes representing each software application and its vulnerability information, and edges representing the relationships between the nodes, wherein the edges are weighted based, in part, on a difference between a privilege level of an operating system or a processor architecture needed to execute an attack between connected nodes and a privilege level of the operating system or the processor architecture granted after a successful attack;
• run one or more graph-processing algorithms on the cyber-physical graph to identify one or more privilege escalation attack pathways and a probability of occurrence for each path;
• and
• generate a cybersecurity score for each privilege escalation attack pathway based on the probability of occurrence for each path.