USN-213-1: sudo vulnerability

Publication date

28 October 2005

Overview

sudo vulnerability


Details

Tavis Ormandy discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in sudo.
On executing shell scripts with sudo, the "P4" and "SHELLOPTS"
environment variables were not cleaned properly. If sudo is set up to
grant limited sudo privileges to normal users this could be exploited
to run arbitrary commands as the target user.

Updated packags for Ubuntu 4.10:

Tavis Ormandy discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in sudo.
On executing shell scripts with sudo, the "P4" and "SHELLOPTS"
environment variables were not cleaned properly. If sudo is set up to
grant limited sudo privileges to normal users this could be exploited
to run arbitrary commands as the target user.

Updated packags for Ubuntu 4.10:

Update instructions

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
5.10 breezy sudo – 
5.04 hoary sudo – 
4.10 warty sudo – 

Reduce your security exposure

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