Description
In Sudo before 1.9.12p2, 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. This can lead to privilege escalation. Affected versions are 1.8.0 through 1.9.12.p1. The problem exists because a user-specified editor may contain a "--" argument that defeats a protection mechanism, e.g., an EDITOR='vim -- /path/to/extra/file' value.
CVSS Metrics
- Vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack Vector
- local
- Complexity
- low
- Privileges
- low
- User Action
- none
- Scope
- unchanged
- Confidentiality
- high
- Integrity
- high
- Availability
- high
- Weaknesses
- CWE-269CWE-269
Metadata
- Primary Vendor
- SUDO_PROJECT
- Published
- 1/18/2023
- Last Modified
- 4/4/2025
- Source
- NIST NVD
- Note: Verify all details with official vendor sources before applying patches.
Affected Products
sudo_project : sudosudo_project : sudosudo_project : sudodebian : debian_linuxdebian : debian_linuxfedoraproject : fedorafedoraproject : fedoraapple : macos
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