Sudo privilege escalation vulnerability [CVE-2023-22809]
CVE number = CVE-2023-22809
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.
The technical analysis can be found in the following security advisory:
https://www.synacktiv.com/sites/default/files/2023-01/sudo-CVE-2023-22809.pdf
I am one of the editors here at www.systemtek.co.uk I am a UK based technology professional, with an interest in computer security and telecoms.