It depends. Privilege escalation can allow rootkits to install themselves. To get a really severe exploit you usually need to combine a remote code execution wi

It depends. Privilege escalation can allow rootkits to install themselves. To get a really severe exploit you usually need to combine a remote code execution with a privilege escalation. So this would only be one part. But you never know if somebody already has another zero day exploit in their pocket and waits for such an opportunity. Some bugs are there for years before they are found. This doesn’t mean that nobody found them before. It only means that nobody used them in a way that it got detected.