USN-983-1: Sudo vulnerability
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-983-1
7th September, 2010
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 9.10
Under non-default configurations, a local user could run programs with administrator privileges.
- sudo - Provide limited super user privileges to specific users
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
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:
- Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
- sudo-ldap 1.7.2p1-1ubuntu5.2
- sudo 1.7.2p1-1ubuntu5.2
- Ubuntu 9.10:
- sudo-ldap 1.7.0-1ubuntu2.5
- sudo 1.7.0-1ubuntu2.5
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.