sudo: Privilege escalation — GLSA 201006-09

A flaw in sudo's -e option may allow local attackers to execute arbitrary commands.

Affected packages

app-admin/sudo on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.7.2_p6
Unaffected versions >= 1.7.2_p6

Background

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

Description

The command matching functionality does not properly handle when a file in the current working directory has the same name as a pseudo-command in the sudoers file and the PATH contains an entry for ".".

Impact

A local attacker with the permission to run sudoedit could, under certain circumstances, execute arbitrary commands as whichever user he has permission to run sudoedit as, typically root.

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-1.7.2_p6"

References

Release date
June 01, 2010

Latest revision
June 01, 2010: 01

Severity
high

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries