CVE-2023-22809

high

Published 2023-01-23 · Modified 2023-01-23

💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

—

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

9.0

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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

90%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-51217 local linux

n3m1.sys · 2023-04-03

sudo 1.8.0 to 1.9.12p1 - Privilege Escalation

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

Metasploit modules

exploit_linux/local/sudoedit_bypass_priv_esc rank 600

Sudoedit Extra Arguments Priv Esc

Source fetch failed: fetch_error — view the original via the link above.

OS impact

SUSE Affected 1 release

Version	Status	Fixed in
—	Affected	—

Debian Fixed 5 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`1.9.12p2-1`
sid	Fixed	`1.9.12p2-1`
forky	Fixed	`1.9.12p2-1`
bullseye	Fixed	`1.9.5p2-3+deb11u1`
bookworm	Fixed	`1.9.12p2-1`

Red Hat Fixed 2 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
9	Fixed	—
8	Fixed	—

Rocky Linux Fixed 2 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
9	Fixed	—
8	Fixed	—

References

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.