DEV Community

nabbisen
nabbisen

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at scqr.net

sudoedit (`sudo -e`) security flaw (CVE-2023-22809)

Security vulnerability

A new sudo vulnerability was found. It was on sudoedit (sudo -e) flaw. With it, attackers can edit arbitrary files, and therefore machines were at the risk of the pwned and having information steeled.

CVE

CVE-2023-22809

Impact

(with appreciation to @jmau111's comments)

The official website statements:

If no users have been granted access to sudoedit there is no impact.

It is the case, for example, that /etc/sudoers (or the target visudo uses) has such a line:

someuser ALL=(root) sudoedit /etc/some.conf
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

someuser can edit another file by exploiting the flaw.

Solution

If sudo is 1.8 or greater, it is recommended to update it to the latest version (1.9.12p2) released today, on 2023-01-19.

Temporary workaround

In case that you can't update it right now,

the official website describes there is a way to mitigate it by adding the line below to sudoers:

Defaults!sudoedit    env_delete+="SUDO_EDITOR VISUAL EDITOR"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Reference

This post is based on the tweets by my company

Top comments (7)

Collapse
 
jmau111 profile image
jmau111 πŸ¦„ • Edited

hey hey ^^:

sudo apt update; sudo apt --only-upgrade install sudo
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If you can update. Otherwise, you can force install by downloading the tar file and make make install

Collapse
 
jmau111 profile image
jmau111 πŸ¦„

Although, read that before:

If no users have been granted access to sudoedit there is no impact.

Collapse
 
nabbisen profile image
nabbisen

Hi, thank you so much for your detailed information ✨
You are perfectly right. We can make it installed πŸ˜†

Well, thank you, again. I added the description about "Impact" to my post with the appreciation to you.

Thread Thread
 
jmau111 profile image
jmau111 πŸ¦„

Pleasure.

Yes, impact is really important in such news. I'm actually quite surprised they found something.

Thread Thread
 
nabbisen profile image
nabbisen

Impact πŸ’‘ I learned with your kind description 😌
Agreed. They are really surprising and awesome.

Collapse
 
m4ty profile image
Maty

Doas enjoyers chilling.

Collapse
 
nabbisen profile image
nabbisen

Ha ha. Actually, there is no impact to doas (and opendoas) as to this case.