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HIGH

sudo: arbitrary file write with privileges of the RunAs user

Published Jan 18, 2023

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.

Affected products

Remediation

Red Hat mitigation

It is possible to prevent a user-specified editor from being used by sudoedit by adding the following line to the sudoers file. ~~~ Defaults!sudoedit env_delete+="SUDO_EDITOR VISUAL EDITOR" ~~~ To restrict the editor when editing specific files, a Cmnd_Alias can be used, for example: ~~~ Cmnd_Alias EDIT_MOTD = sudoedit /etc/motd Defaults!EDIT_MOTD env_delete+="SUDO_EDITOR VISUAL EDITOR" user ALL = EDIT_MOTD ~~~ But if possible please update the affected package as soon as possible.

Weaknesses (1)

CWE-269

Improper Privilege Management

References (20)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner mitre
Published Jan 18, 2023
Updated Apr 4, 2025
Reserved Jan 6, 2023
Link CVE-2023-22809
CISA Vulnrichment
Updated Apr 4, 2025
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Link CVE-2023-22809
Red Hat
Severity Important
Public date Jan 18, 2023
Links CVE-2023-22809 - Bugzilla
ENISA EUVD
Assigner mitre
Published Jan 18, 2023
Updated Apr 4, 2025
Exploited since n/a
Link EUVD-2023-26921
EUVD-2023-26921