Definition
Plain language
Windows' ranking of how much a program is trusted, from low (heavily sandboxed) up to the all-powerful SYSTEM account.
As stated in the literature
A level in Windows Mandatory Integrity Control that governs what a process may access; privilege-escalation exploits move from low or medium integrity up to SYSTEM, the highest-trust account on the machine.
Also called: integrity levels, low integrity, medium integrity
Why it matters: It defines how much a program is trusted on Windows, so an attacker's whole goal is often to climb from a low level up to full SYSTEM control.
For example, a web browser's risky sandbox runs at a low integrity level, while the all-powerful SYSTEM account at the top can touch anything on the machine.
Heard on the show
“Twenty-two of the twenty-eight escalate from low to medium integrity.”Episode 024 — An AI Agent That Found 28 Zero-Days in Windows — And What Made It Work