Skip to content
OpenAdvisories
Unscored CVE-2019-19234 EUVD-2019-8860GHSA-vh47-792w-24m4

In Sudo through 1.8.29, the fact that a user has been blocked (e.g., by using the ! character in the shadow file instead of a password hash…

Published Dec 19, 2019 · Updated Aug 5, 2024 · Assigned by mitre

Description

In Sudo through 1.8.29, the fact that a user has been blocked (e.g., by using the ! character in the shadow file instead of a password hash) is not considered, allowing an attacker (who has access to a Runas ALL sudoer account) to impersonate any blocked user. NOTE: The software maintainer believes that this CVE is not valid. Disabling local password authentication for a user is not the same as disabling all access to that user--the user may still be able to login via other means (ssh key, kerberos, etc). Both the Linux shadow(5) and passwd(1) manuals are clear on this. Indeed it is a valid use case to have local accounts that are _only_ accessible via sudo and that cannot be logged into with a password. Sudo 1.8.30 added an optional setting to check the _shell_ of the target user (not the encrypted password!) against the contents of /etc/shells but that is not the same thing as preventing access to users with an invalid password hash

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 sudo 1.8.31-1 —
Debian 13 sudo 1.8.31-1 —
Debian 12 sudo 1.8.31-1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS sudo 1.8.31-1ubuntu1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
RHEL 8 sudo 1.8.29-5.el8 RHSA-2020:1804

Advisories 2

References