GLSA 202305-12: sudo: Root Privilege Escalation

Severity:high
Title:sudo: Root Privilege Escalation
Date:05/03/2023
Bugs: #891335
ID:202305-12

Synopsis

A vulnerability has been discovered in sudo which could result in root privilege escalation.

Background

sudo allows a system administrator to give users the ability to run commands as other users.

Affected packages

Package Vulnerable Unaffected Architecture(s)
app-admin/sudo < 1.9.12_p2 >= 1.9.12_p2 All supported architectures

Description

The sudoedit (aka -e) feature mishandles extra arguments passed in the user-provided environment variables (SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL, and EDITOR), allowing a local attacker to append arbitrary entries to the list of files to process.

Impact

The improper processing of user's environment variables could lead to the editing of arbitrary files as root, potentially leading to root privilege escalation.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All sudo users should upgrade to the latest version:

          # emerge --sync
          # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-admin/sudo-1.9.12_p2"
        

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-202305-12.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org.

License

Copyright 2010 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text belongs to its owner(s). The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

Thank you!