USN-983-1: Sudo vulnerability

7 September 2010

Under non-default configurations, a local user could run programs with administrator privileges.

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Releases

Packages

  • sudo - Provide limited super user privileges to specific users

Details

Markus Wuethrich discovered that sudo did not always verify the user when a
group was specified in the Runas_Spec. A local attacker could exploit this
to execute arbitrary code as root if sudo was configured to allow the
attacker to use a program as a group when the attacker was not a part of
that group.

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 9.10
Ubuntu 10.04

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

References