

To give you an idea, in the last two years, two other vulnerabilities in the Sudo command have been found, but none as serious and dangerous as the discovery by the Qualys’ security team, considering the scope and impact of the newly discovered vulnerability.
#Linux sudo update
The CVE-2021-3156 heap overflow vulnerability, also known as Baron Samedit, was addressed in the update to Sudo version 1.9.5p2, released in late January.ĬVE-2021-3156, which would have been present in the operating system for at least 10 years, allows a malicious attacker with a common, low-privileged user to gain privileged access, even if their account is not listed in /etc/Sudoers – a configuration file that controls which users have access to the Sudo command. In early 2021, Qualys discovered and disclosed another critical vulnerability associated with Linux Sudo. Thus, the Sudo command temporarily elevates the user’s privileges, allowing the execution of administrative tasks without the user having to authenticate as an administrator or root. By default, these operating systems restrict access to certain parts of the system, allowing sensitive files to be compromised by users. That’s because Sudo is a command used to access privileged files and operations on Unix-based operating systems. And when a vulnerability is found in Sudo, the problem is certainly very critical. One of the most powerful and fundamental tools for Linux and Unix users is Sudo, or SuperUser DO, and is found in all distributions of these operating systems. Malicious attackers also take advantage of the growing use of Linux/Unix to discover and exploit vulnerabilities in these systems. According to IBM in its X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report, in 2020 alone, hackers have created 56 categories of viruses for Linux, a 40% increase from 2019. However, along with the growth in its use, the threats associated with Unix and Linux-based operating systems are also greater. Many technologies associated with the DevOps universe, such as containers and cloud environments, are built around Linux. Additionally, Linux-based operating systems have been sought by IT application developers. Today, both operating systems are present all over the world, in addition to several types of devices: from embedded systems of automobiles and mobile phones to network devices and web servers. The origin of the name of this new system would be exactly the name of its developer associated with the word Unix, on which the Linux kernel is based.

#Linux sudo software
Almost three decades later, in 1991, Linus Torvalds, a software engineer at the University of Helsinki, created his own operating system, which he called Linux.

The new system, which uses a command-line interface, or CLI, soon became popular in companies around the world for having open source, in addition to allowing easy modification and good portability. The sudo configuration is managed by the /etc/sudoers file.In the late 1960s, AT&T Bell Labs launched Unix, its operating system.
#Linux sudo password
With sudo the user can (and probably should) be required to provide a password in order to execute the application. If the setuid bit is set on an executable, any user would be able to run the application (or any user of a certain group, depending on the permissions used). With sudo a clear list can be made of who can execute a certain application. Unlike using the setuid bit on these applications sudo gives a more fine-grained control on who can execute a certain command and when. The app-admin/sudo package allows the system administrator to grant permission to other users to execute one or more applications they would normally have no right to. This is very useful when tracking who made that one fatal mistake that took 10 hours to fix :) One additional advantage of sudo is that it can log any attempt (successful or not) to run an application. Root # emerge -ask app-admin/sudo Configuration Logging activity
