Sudo
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Legacy Release

The sudo 1.8 branch is considered the legacy version. It receives no new features, only critical bug fixes. Users are highly encouraged to migrate to the sudo stable branch.

The current legacy release of sudo is 1.8.32.

For full details of all changes, see the ChangeLog file or view the commit history via mercurial or GitHub


Sudo 1.8.32

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.9 where the closefrom sudoers option could not be set to a value of 3. Bug #950.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.24 in the LDAP back-end where sudoNotBefore and sudoNotAfter were applied even when the SUDOERS_TIMED setting was not present in ldap.conf. Bug #945.

  • Fixed a buffer size mismatch when serializing the list of IP addresses for configured network interfaces. This bug is not actually exploitable since the allocated buffer is large enough to hold the list of addresses.

  • If sudo is executed with a name other than sudo or sudoedit, it will now fall back to sudo as the program name. This affects warning, help and usage messages as well as the matching of Debug lines in the /etc/sudo.conf file. Previously, it was possible for the invoking user to manipulate the program name by setting argv[0] to an arbitrary value when executing sudo.

  • Sudo now checks for failure when setting the close-on-exec flag on open file descriptors. This should never fail but, if it were to, there is the possibility of a file descriptor leak to a child process (such as the command sudo runs).

  • Fixed CVE-2021-23239, a potential information leak in sudoedit that could be used to test for the existence of directories not normally accessible to the user in certain circumstances. When creating a new file, sudoedit checks to make sure the parent directory of the new file exists before running the editor. However, a race condition exists if the invoking user can replace (or create) the parent directory. If a symbolic link is created in place of the parent directory, sudoedit will run the editor as long as the target of the link exists. If the target of the link does not exist, an error message will be displayed. The race condition can be used to test for the existence of an arbitrary directory. However, it cannot be used to write to an arbitrary location.

  • Fixed CVE-2021-23240, a flaw in the temporary file handling of sudoedit’s SELinux RBAC support. On systems where SELinux is enabled, a user with sudoedit permissions may be able to set the owner of an arbitrary file to the user-ID of the target user. On Linux kernels that support protected symlinks setting /proc/sys/fs/protected_symlinks to 1 will prevent the bug from being exploited. For more information, see Symbolic link attack in SELinux-enabled sudoedit.

  • Added writability checks for sudoedit when SELinux RBAC is in use. This makes sudoedit behavior consistent regardless of whether or not SELinux RBAC is in use. Previously, the sudoedit_checkdir setting had no effect for RBAC entries.

  • When invoked as sudoedit, the same set of command line options are now accepted as for sudo -e. The -H and -P options are now rejected for sudoedit and sudo -e which matches the sudo 1.7 behavior. This is part of the fix for CVE-2021-3156.

  • Fixed a potential buffer overflow when unescaping backslashes in the command’s arguments. Normally, sudo escapes special characters when running a command via a shell (sudo -s or sudo -i). However, it was also possible to run sudoedit with the -s or -i flags in which case no escaping had actually been done, making a buffer overflow possible. This fixes CVE-2021-3156.


Sudo 1.8.31p2

  • Sudo command line options that take a value may only be specified once. This is to help guard against problems caused by poorly written scripts that invoke sudo with user-controlled input. Bug #924.

  • When running a command in a pty, sudo will no longer try to suspend itself if the user’s tty has been revoked (for instance when the parent ssh daemon is killed). This fixes a bug where sudo would continuously suspend the command (which would succeed), then suspend itself (which would fail due to the missing tty) and then resume the command.

  • If sudo’s event loop fails due to the tty being revoked, remove the user’s tty events and restart the event loop (once). This fixes a problem when running sudo reboot in a pty on some systems. When the event loop exited unexpectedly, sudo would kill the command running in the pty, which in the case of reboot, could lead to the system being in a half-rebooted state.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.23 in the LDAP and SSSD back-ends where a missing sudoHost attribute was treated as an ALL wildcard value. A sudoRole with no sudoHost attribute is now ignored as it was prior to version 1.8.23.


Sudo 1.8.31p1

  • Sudo once again ignores a failure to restore the RLIMIT_CORE resource limit, as it did prior to version 1.8.29. Linux containers don’t allow RLIMIT_CORE to be set back to RLIM_INFINITY if we set the limit to zero, even for root, which resulted in a warning from sudo.

Sudo 1.8.31

  • Fixed CVE-2019-18634, a buffer overflow when the pwfeedback sudoers option is enabled on systems with uni-directional pipes.

  • The sudoedit_checkdir option now treats a user-owned directory as writable, even if it does not have the write bit set at the time of check. Symbolic links will no longer be followed by sudoedit in any user-owned directory. Bug #912.

  • Fixed sudoedit on macOS 10.15 and above where the root file system is mounted read-only. Bug #913.

  • Fixed a crash introduced in sudo 1.8.30 when suspending sudo at the password prompt. Bug #914.

  • Fixed compilation on systems where the mmap MAP_ANON flag is not available. Bug #915.


Sudo 1.8.30

  • Fixed a warning on macOS introduced in sudo 1.8.29 when sudo attempts to set the open file limit to unlimited. Bug #904.

  • Sudo now closes file descriptors before changing uids. This prevents a non-root process from interfering with sudo’s ability to close file descriptors on systems that support the prlimit(2) system call.

  • Sudo now treats an attempt to run sudo sudoedit as simply sudoedit If the sudoers file contains a fully-qualified path to sudoedit, sudo will now treat it simply as sudoedit (with no path). Visudo will will now treat a fully-qualified path to sudoedit as an error. Bug #871.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.28 where sudo would warn about a missing /etc/environment file on AIX and Linux when PAM is not enabled. Bug #907.

  • Fixed a bug on Linux introduced in sudo 1.8.29 that prevented the askpass program from running due to an unlimited stack size resource limit. Bug #908.

  • If a group provider plugin has optional arguments, the argument list passed to the plugin is now NULL terminated as per the documentation.

  • The user’s time stamp file is now only updated if both authentication and approval phases succeed. This is consistent with the behavior of sudo prior to version 1.8.23. Bug #910.

  • The new allow_unknown_runas_id sudoers setting can be used to enable or disable the use of unknown user or group IDs. Previously, sudo would always allow unknown user or group IDs if the sudoers entry permitted it, including via the ALL alias. As of sudo 1.8.30, the admin must explicitly enable support for unknown IDs.

  • The new runas_check_shell sudoers setting can be used to require that the runas user have a shell listed in the /etc/shells file. On many systems, users such as bin, do not have a valid shell and this flag can be used to prevent commands from being run as those users.

    Fixed a problem restoring the SELinux tty context during reboot if mctransd is killed before sudo finishes. GitHub Issue #17.

  • Fixed an intermittent warning on NetBSD when sudo restores the initial stack size limit.


Sudo 1.8.29

  • The cvtsudoers command will now reject non-LDIF input when converting from LDIF format to sudoers or JSON formats.

  • The new log_allowed and log_denied sudoers settings make it possible to disable logging and auditing of allowed and/or denied commands.

  • The umask is now handled differently on systems with PAM or login.conf. If the umask is explicitly set in sudoers, that value is used regardless of what PAM or login.conf may specify. However, if the umask is not explicitly set in sudoers, PAM or login.conf may now override the default sudoers umask. Bug #900.

  • For make install, the sudoers file is no longer checked for syntax errors when DESTDIR is set. The default sudoers file includes the contents of /etc/sudoers.d which may not be readable as non-root. Bug #902.

  • Sudo now sets most resource limits to their maximum value to avoid problems caused by insufficient resources, such as an inability to allocate memory or open files and pipes.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.28 where sudo would refuse to run if the parent process was not associated with a session. This was due to sudo passing a session ID of -1 to the plugin.


Sudo 1.8.28p1

  • The fix for Bug #869 caused sudo -v to prompt for a password when verifypw is set to all (the default) and all of the user’s sudoers entries are marked with NOPASSWD. Bug #901.

Sudo 1.8.28

  • Sudo will now only set PAM_TTY to the empty string when no terminal is present on Solaris and Linux. This workaround is only needed on those systems which may have PAM modules that misbehave when PAM_TTY is not set.

  • The mailerflags sudoers option now has a default value even if sendmail support was disabled at configure time. Fixes a crash when the mailerpath sudoers option is set but mailerflags is not. Bug #878.

  • Sudo will now filter out last login messages on HP-UX unless it a shell is being run via sudo -s or sudo -i. Otherwise, when trusted mode is enabled, these messages will be displayed for each command.

  • On AIX, when the user’s password has expired and PAM is not in use, sudo will now allow the user to change their password. Bug #883.

  • Sudo has a new -B command line option that will ring the terminal bell when prompting for a password.

  • Sudo no longer refuses to prompt for a password when it cannot determine the user’s terminal as long as it can open /dev/tty. This allows sudo to function on systems where /proc is unavailable, such as when running in a chroot environment.

  • The env_editor sudoers flag is now on by default. This makes source builds more consistent with the packages generated by sudo’s mkpkg script.

  • Sudo no longer ships with pre-formatted copies of the manual pages. These were included for systems like IRIX that don’t ship with an nroff utility. There are now multiple Open Source nroff replacements so this should no longer be an issue.

  • Fixed a bad interaction with configure’s --prefix and --disable-shared options. Bug #886.

  • More verbose error message when a password is required and no terminal is present. Bug #828.

  • Command tags, such as NOPASSWD, are honored when a user tries to run a command that is allowed by sudoers but which does not actually exist on the file system. Bug #888.

  • Asturian translation for sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • I/O log timing files now store signal suspend and resume information in the form of a signal name instead of a number.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.24 that prevented sudo from honoring the value of ipa_hostname from sssd.conf, if specified, when matching the host name. This flaw has been assigned CVE-2023-7090.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.21 that prevented the core dump resource limit set in the pam_limits module from taking effect. Bug #894.

  • Fixed parsing of double-quoted Defaults group and netgroup bindings.

  • The user ID is now used when matching sudoUser attributes in LDAP. Previously, the user name, group name and group IDs were used when matching but not the user ID.

  • Sudo now writes PAM messages to the user’s terminal, if available, instead of the standard output or standard error. This prevents PAM output from being intermixed with that of the command when output is sent to a file or pipe. Bug #895.

  • Sudoedit now honors the umask and umask_override settings in sudoers. Previously, the user’s umask was used as-is.

  • Fixed a bug where the terminal’s file context was not restored when using SELinux RBAC. Bug #898.

  • Fixed a security issue where a sudo user may be able to run a command as root when the Runas specification explicitly disallows root access as long as the ALL keyword is listed first. This vulnerability has been assigned CVE-2019-14287.


Sudo 1.8.27

  • On HP-UX, sudo will now update the utmps file when running a command in a pseudo-tty. Previously, only the utmp and utmpx files were updated.

  • Nanosecond precision file time stamps are now supported on HP-UX.

  • Fixes and clarifications to the sudo plugin documentation.

  • The sudo manuals no longer require extensive post-processing to hide system-specific features. Conditionals in the roff source are now used instead. This fixes corruption of the sudo manual on systems without BSD login classes. Bug #861.

  • If an I/O logging plugin is configured but the plugin does not actually log any I/O, sudo will no longer force the command to be run in a pseudo-tty.

  • The fix for bug #843 in sudo 1.8.24 was incomplete. If the user’s password was expired or needed to be updated, but no sudo password was required, the PAM handle was freed too early, resulting in a failure when processing PAM session modules.

  • In visudo, it is now possible to specify the path to sudoers without using the -f option. Bug #864.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.22 where the utmp (or utmpx) file would not be updated when a command was run in a pseudo-tty. Bug #865.

  • Sudo now sets the silent flag when opening the PAM session except when running a shell via sudo -s or sudo -i. This prevents the pam_lastlog module from printing the last login information for each sudo command. Bug #867.

  • Sudo now sets the silent flag when opening the PAM session except when running a shell via sudo -s or sudo -i. This prevents the pam_lastlog module from printing the last login information for each sudo command. Bug #867.

  • Fixed the default AIX hard resource limit for the maximum number of files a user may have open. If no hard limit for nofiles is explicitly set in /etc/security/limits, the default should be unlimited. Previously, the default hard limit was 8196.


Sudo 1.8.26

  • Fixed a bug in cvtsudoers when converting to JSON format when alias expansion is enabled. Bug #853.

  • Sudo no long sets the USERNAME environment variable when running commands. This is a non-standard environment variable that was set on some older Linux systems.

  • Sudo now treats the LOGNAME and USER environment variables (as well as the LOGIN variable on AIX) as a single unit. If one is preserved or removed from the environment using env_keep, env_check or env_delete, so is the other.

  • Added support for OpenLDAP’s TLS_REQCERT setting in ldap.conf.

  • Sudo now logs when the command was suspended and resumed in the I/O logs. This information is used by sudoreplay to skip the time suspended when replaying the session unless the new -S flag is used.

  • Fixed documentation problems found by the igor utility. Bug #854.

  • Sudo now prints a warning message when there is an error or end of file while reading the password instead of exiting silently.

  • Fixed a bug in the sudoers LDAP back-end parsing the command_timeout, role, type, privs and limitprivs sudoOptions. This also affected cvtsudoers conversion from LDIF to sudoers or JSON.

  • Fixed a bug that prevented timeout settings in sudoers from functioning unless a timeout was also specified on the command line.

  • Asturian translation for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • When generating LDIF output, cvtsudoers can now be configured to pad the sudoOrder increment such that the start order is used as a prefix. Bug #856.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.25 that prevented sudo from properly setting the user’s groups on AIX. Bug #857.

  • If the user specifies a group via sudo’s -g option that matches any of the target user’s groups, it is now allowed even if no groups are present in the Runas_Spec. Previously, it was only allowed if it matched the target user’s primary group.

  • The sudoers LDAP back-end now supports negated sudoRunAsUser and sudoRunAsGroup entries.

  • Sudo now provides a proper error message when the fqdn sudoers option is set and it is unable to resolve the local host name. Bug #859.

  • Portuguese translation for sudo and sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Sudo now includes sudoers LDAP schema for the on-line configuration supported by OpenLDAP.


Sudo 1.8.25p1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.25 that caused a crash on systems that have the poll() function but not the ppoll() function. Bug #851.

Sudo 1.8.25

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.20 that broke formatting of I/O log timing file entries on systems without a C99-compatible snprintf() function. Our replacement snprintf() doesn’t support floating point so we can’t use the %f format directive.

  • I/O log timing file entries now use a monotonic timer and include nanosecond precision. A monotonic timer that does not increment while the system is sleeping is used where available.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.24 where sudoNotAfter in the LDAP backend was not being properly parsed. Bug #845.

  • When sudo runs a command in a pseudo-tty, the slave device is now closed in the main process immediately after starting the monitor process. This removes the need for an AIX-specific workaround that was added in sudo 1.8.24.

  • Added support for monotonic timers on HP-UX.

  • Fixed a bug displaying timeout values the sudo -V output. The value displayed was 3600 times the actual value. Bug #846.

  • Fixed a build issue on AIX 7.1 BOS levels that include memset_s() and define rsize_t in string.h. Bug #847.

  • The testsudoers utility now supports querying an LDIF-format policy.

  • Sudo now sets the LOGIN environment variable to the same value as LOGNAME on AIX systems. Bug #848.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.24 where the LDAP and SSSD backends evaluated the rules in reverse sudoOrder. Bug #849.


Sudo 1.8.24

  • The LDAP and SSS back-ends now use the same rule evaluation code as the sudoers file backend. This builds on the work in sudo 1.8.23 where the formatting functions for sudo -l output were shared. The handling of negated commands in SSS and LDAP is unchanged.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in 1.8.23 where sudo -i could not be used in conjunction with --preserve-env=VARIABLE. Bug #835.

  • cvtsudoers can now parse base64-encoded attributes in LDIF files.

  • Random insults are now more random.

  • Fixed the noexec wordexp(3) test on FreeBSD.

  • Added SUDO_CONV_PREFER_TTY flag for conversation function to tell sudo to try writing to /dev/tty first. Can be used in conjunction with SUDO_CONV_INFO_MSG and SUDO_CONV_ERROR_MSG.

  • Sudo now supports an arbitrary number of groups per user on Solaris. Previously, only the first 64 groups were found. This should remove the need to set max_groups in sudo.conf.

  • Fixed typos in the OpenLDAP sudo schema. Bugs #839 and #840. Bug #839 and bug #840.

  • Fixed a race condition when building with parallel make. Bug #842.

  • Fixed a duplicate free when netgroup_base in ldap.conf is set to an invalid value.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.23 on AIX that could prevent local users and groups from being resolved properly on systems that have users stored in NIS, LDAP or AD.

  • Added a workaround for an AIX bug exposed by a change in sudo 1.8.23 that prevents the terminal mode from being restored when I/O logging is enabled.

  • On systems using PAM, sudo now ignores the PAM_NEW_AUTHTOK_REQD and PAM_AUTHTOK_EXPIRED errors from PAM account management if authentication is disabled for the user. This fixes a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.23. Bug #843.

  • Fixed an ambiguity in the sudoers manual in the description and definition of User, Runas, Host, and Cmnd Aliases. Bug #834.

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in only the first window size change event being logged.

  • Fixed a bug on HP-UX systems introduced in sudo 1.8.22 that caused sudo to prompt for a password every time when tty-based time stamp files were in use.

  • Fixed a compilation problem on systems that define O_PATH or O_SEARCH in fnctl.h but do not define O_DIRECTORY. Bug #844.


Sudo 1.8.23

  • PAM account management modules and BSD auth approval modules are now run even when no password is required.

  • For kernel-based time stamps, if no terminal is present, fall back to parent-pid style time stamps.

  • The new cvtsudoers utility replaces both the sudoers2ldif script and the visudo -x functionality. It can read a file in either sudoers or LDIF format and produce JSON, LDIF or sudoers output. It is also possible to filter the generated output file by user, group or host name.

  • The file, ldap and sss sudoers backends now share a common set of formatting functions for sudo -l output, which is also used by the cvtsudoers utility.

  • The /run directory is now used in preference to /var/run if it exists. Bug #822.

  • More accurate descriptions of the --with-rundir and --with-vardir configure options. Bug #823.

  • The setpassent() and setgroupent() functions are now used on systems that support them to keep the passwd and group database open. Sudo performs a lot of passwd and group lookups so it can be beneficial to avoid opening and closing the files each time.

  • The new case_insensitive_user and case_insensitive_group sudoers options can be used to control whether sudo does case-sensitive matching of users and groups in sudoers. Case insensitive matching is now the default.

  • Fixed a bug on some systems where sudo could hang on command exit when I/O logging was enabled. Bug #826.

  • Fixed a problem with the process start time test in make check when run in a Linux container. The test now uses the btime field in /proc/stat to get the system start time instead of using /proc/uptime, which is the container uptime. Bug #829.

  • When determining which temporary directory to use, sudoedit now checks the directory for writability before using it. Previously, sudoedit only performed an existence check. Bug #827.

  • Sudo now includes an optional set of Monty Python-inspired insults.

  • Fixed the execution of scripts with an associated digest (checksum) in sudoers on FreeBSD systems. FreeBSD does not have a full /dev/fd directory mounted by default and its fexecve(2) is not fully POSIX compliant when executing scripts. Bug #831.

  • Chinese (Taiwan) translation for sudo from translationproject.org.


Sudo 1.8.22

  • Commands run in the background from a script run via sudo will no longer receive SIGHUP when the parent exits and I/O logging is enabled. Bug #502.

  • A particularly offensive insult is now disabled by default. Bug #804.

  • The description of sudo -i now correctly documents that the env_keep and env_check sudoers options are applied to the environment. Bug #806.

  • Fixed a crash when the system’s host name is not set. Bug #807.

  • The sudoers2ldif script now handles #include and #includedir directives.

  • Fixed a bug where sudo would silently exit when the command was not allowed by sudoers and the passwd_tries sudoers option was set to a value less than one.

  • Fixed a bug with the listpw and verifypw sudoers options and multiple sudoers sources. If the option is set to all a password should be required unless none of a user’s sudoers entries from any source require authentication.

  • Fixed a bug with the listpw and verifypw sudoers options in the LDAP and SSSD back-ends. If the option is set to any and the entry contained multiple rules, only the first matching rule was checked. If an entry contained more than one matching rule and the first rule required authentication but a subsequent rule did not, sudo would prompt for a password when it should not have.

  • When running a command as the invoking user (not root), sudo would execute the command with the same group vector it was started with. Sudo now executes the command with a new group vector based on the group database which is consistent with how su(1) operates.

  • Fixed a double free in the SSSD back-end that could occur when ipa_hostname is present in sssd.conf and is set to an unqualified host name.

  • When I/O logging is enabled, sudo will now write to the terminal even when it is a background process. Previously, sudo would only write to the tty when it was the foreground process when I/O logging was enabled. If the TOSTOP terminal flag is set, sudo will suspend the command (and then itself) with the SIGTTOU signal.

  • A new authfail_message sudoers option that overrides the default N incorrect password attempt(s).

  • An empty sudoRunAsUser attribute in the LDAP and SSSD backends will now match the invoking user. This is more consistent with how an empty runas user in the sudoers file is treated.

  • Documented that in check mode, visudo does not check the owner/mode on files specified with the -f flag. Bug #809.

  • It is now an error to specify the runas user as an empty string on the command line. Previously, an empty runas user was treated the same as an unspecified runas user. Bug #817.

  • When timestamp_type option is set to tty and a terminal is present, the time stamp record will now include the start time of the session leader. When the timestamp_type option is set to ppid or when no terminal is available, the start time of the parent process is used instead. This significantly reduces the likelihood of a time stamp record being re-used when a user logs out and back in again. Bug #818.

  • The sudoers time stamp file format is now documented in the new sudoers_timestamp manual.

  • The timestamp_type option now takes a kernel value on OpenBSD systems. This causes the tty-based time stamp to be stored in the kernel instead of on the file system. If no tty is present, the time stamp is considered to be invalid.

  • Visudo will now use the SUDO_EDITOR environment variable (if present) in addition to VISUAL and EDITOR.


Sudo 1.8.21p2

  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 1.8.21 which prevented sudo from using the PAM-supplied prompt. Bug #799.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 1.8.21 which could result in sudo hanging when running commands that exit quickly. Bug #800.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 1.8.21 which prevented the command from being run when the password was read via an external program using the askpass interface. Bug #801.


Sudo 1.8.21p1

  • On systems that support both PAM and SIGINFO, the main sudo process will no longer forward SIGINFO to the command if the signal was generated from the keyboard. The command will have already received SIGINFO since it is part of the same process group so there’s no need for sudo to forward it. This is consistent with the handling of SIGINT, SIGQUIT and SIGTSTP. Bug #796.

  • If SUDOERS_SEARCH_FILTER in ldap.conf does not specify a value, the LDAP search expression used when looking up netgroups and non-Unix groups had a syntax error if a group plugin was not specified.

  • sudo -U otheruser -l will now have an exit value of 0 even if otheruser has no sudo privileges. The exit value when a user attempts to lists their own privileges or when a command is specified is unchanged.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.21 where sudoreplay playback would hang for I/O logs that contain terminal input.

  • Sudo 1.8.18 contained an incomplete fix for the matching of entries in the LDAP and SSSD backends when a sudoRunAsGroup is specified but no sudoRunAsUser is present in the sudoRole.


Sudo 1.8.21

  • The path that sudo uses to search for terminal devices can now be configured via the new devsearch Path setting in sudo.conf.

  • It is now possible to preserve bash shell functions in the environment when the env_reset sudoers setting is disabled by removing the “=()” pattern from the env_delete list.

  • A change made in sudo 1.8.15 inadvertently caused sudoedit to send itself SIGHUP instead of exiting when the editor returns an error or the file was not modified.

  • Sudoedit now uses an exit code of zero if the file was not actually modified. Previously, sudoedit treated a lack of modifications as an error.

  • When running a command in a pseudo-tty (pty), sudo now copies a subset of the terminal flags to the new pty. Previously, all flags were copied, even those not appropriate for a pty.

  • Fixed a problem with debug logging in the sudoers I/O logging plugin.

  • Window size change events are now logged to the policy plugin. On xterm and compatible terminals, sudoreplay is now capable of resizing the terminal to match the size of the terminal the command was run on. The new -R option can be used to disable terminal resizing.

  • Fixed a bug in visudo where a newly added file was not checked for syntax errors. Bug #791.

  • Fixed a bug in visudo where if a syntax error in an include directory (like /etc/sudoers.d) was detected, the edited version was left as a temporary file instead of being installed.

  • On PAM systems, sudo will now treat username’s Password: as a standard password prompt. As a result, the SUDO_PROMPT environment variable will now override username’s Password: as well as the more common Password:. Previously, the passprompt_override Defaults setting would need to be set for SUDO_PROMPT to override a prompt of username’s Password:.

  • A new syslog_pid sudoers setting has been added to include sudo’s process ID along with the process name when logging via syslog. Bug #792.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.18 where a command would not be terminated when the I/O logging plugin returned an error to the sudo front-end.

  • A new timestamp_type sudoers setting has been added that replaces the tty_tickets option. In addition to tty and global time stamp records, it is now possible to use the parent process ID to restrict the time stamp to commands run by the same process, usually the shell. Bug #793.

  • The --preserve-env command line option has been extended to accept a comma-separated list of environment variables to preserve.

  • A new Friulian translation from translationproject.org.


Sudo 1.8.20p2

  • Fixed a bug parsing /proc/pid/stat on Linux when the process name contain a newline. This is not exploitable due to the /dev traversal changes made in sudo 1.8.20p1.

Sudo 1.8.20p1

  • Fixed make check when using OpenSSL or GNU crypt. Bug #787.

  • Fixed CVE-2017-1000367, a bug parsing /proc/pid/stat on Linux when the process name contains spaces. Since the user has control over the command name, this could potentially be used by a user with sudo access to overwrite an arbitrary file on systems with SELinux enabled. Also stop performing a breadth-first traversal of /dev when looking for the device; only a hard-coded list of directories are checked,


Sudo 1.8.20

  • Added support for SASL_MECH in ldap.conf. Bug #764.

  • Added support for digest matching when the command is a glob-style pattern or a directory. Previously, only explicit path matches supported digest checks.

  • New fdexec Defaults option to control whether a command is executed by path or by open file descriptor.

  • The embedded copy of zlib has been upgraded to version 1.2.11.

  • Fixed a bug that prevented sudoers include files with a relative path starting with the letter ‘i’ from being opened. Bug #776.

  • Added support for command timeouts in sudoers. The command will be terminated if the timeout expires.

  • The SELinux role and type are now displayed in the sudo -l output for the LDAP and SSSD backends, just as they are in the sudoers backend.

  • A new command line option, -T, can be used to specify a command timeout as long as the user-specified timeout is not longer than the timeout specified in sudoers. This option may only be used when the user_command_timeouts flag is enabled in sudoers.

  • Added NOTBEFORE and NOTAFTER command options to the sudoers backend similar to what is already available in the LDAP backend.

  • Sudo can now optionally use the SHA2 functions in OpenSSL or GNU crypt instead of the SHA2 implementation bundled with sudo.

  • Fixed a compilation error on systems without the stdbool.h header file. Bug #778.

  • Fixed a compilation error in the standalone Kerberos V authentication module. Bug #777.

  • Added the iolog_flush flag to sudoers which causes I/O log data to be written immediately to disk instead of being buffered.

  • I/O log files are now created with group ID 0 by default unless the iolog_user or iolog_group options are set in sudoers.

  • It is now possible to store I/O log files on an NFS-mounted file system where uid 0 is remapped to an unprivileged user. The iolog_user option must be set to a non-root user and the top-level I/O log directory must exist and be owned by that user.

  • Added the restricted_env_file setting to sudoers which is similar to env_file but its contents are subject to the same restrictions as variables in the invoking user’s environment.

  • Fixed a use after free bug in the SSSD backend when the fqdn sudoOption is set and no hostname value is present in sssd.conf.

  • Fixed a typo that resulted in a compilation error on systems where the killpg() function is not found by configure.

  • Fixed a compilation error with the bundled version of zlib when sudo was built outside the source tree.

  • Fixed the exit value of sudo when the command is terminated by a signal other than SIGINT. This was broken in sudo 1.8.15 by the fix for Bug #722 Bug #784.

  • Fixed exponential behavior in sudo’s glob() replacement with respect to multiple ‘*’ characters.

  • Sudo no longer needs to display a message when a command running in a pseudo-tty is killed by a signal. Now that the main sudo process delivers the same signal to itself the parent shell will display the message itself.

  • Fixed a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.18 where the lecture option could not be used in a positive boolean context, only a negative one.

  • Fixed an issue where sudo would consume stdin if it was not connected to a tty even if log_input is not enabled in sudoers. Bug #786.


Sudo 1.8.19p2

  • Fixed a crash in visudo introduced in sudo 1.8.9 when an IP address or network is used in a host-based Defaults entry. Bug #766.

  • Added a missing check for the ignore_iolog_errors flag when the sudoers plugin generates the I/O log file path name.

  • Fixed a typo in sudo’s vsyslog() replacement that resulted in garbage being logged to syslog.


Sudo 1.8.19p1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.19 that resulted in the wrong syslog priority and facility being used.

Sudo 1.8.19

  • New syslog_maxlen Defaults option to control the maximum size of syslog messages generated by sudo.

  • Sudo has been run against PVS-Studio and any issues that were not false positives have been addressed.

  • I/O log files are now created same group ID as the parent directory and not the invoking user’s group ID.

  • I/O log permissions and ownership are now configurable via the iolog_mode, iolog_user and iolog_group sudoers Defaults variables.

  • Fixed configuration of the sudoers I/O log plugin debug subsystem. Previously, I/O log information was not being written to the sudoers debug log.

  • Fixed a bug in visudo that broke editing of files in an include dir that have a syntax error. Normally, visudo does not edit those files, but if a syntax error is detected in one, the user should get a chance to fix it.

  • Warnings about unknown or unparsable sudoers Defaults entries now include the file and line number of the problem.

  • Visudo will now use the file and line number information about an unknown or unparsable Defaults entry to go directly to the file with the problem.

  • Fixed a bug in the sudoers LDAP back-end where a negated sudoHost entry would prevent other sudoHost entries following it from matching.

  • Warnings from visudo about a cycle in an Alias entry now include the file and line number of the problem.

  • In strict mode, visudo will now use the file and line number information about a cycle in an Alias entry to go directly to the file with the problem.

  • The sudo_noexec.so file is now linked with -ldl on systems that require it for the wordexp() wrapper.

  • Fixed linking of sudo_noexec.so on macOS systems where it must be a dynamic library and not a module.

  • Sudo’s make check now includes a test for sudo_noexec.so working.

  • The sudo front-end now passes the user’s umask to the plugin. Previously the plugin had to determine this itself.

  • Sudoreplay can now display the stdin and ttyin streams when they are explicitly added to the filter list.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.17 where the all setting for verifypw and listpw was not being honored. Bug #762.

  • The syslog priority (syslog_goodpri and syslog_badpri) can now be negated or set to none to disable logging of successful or unsuccessful sudo attempts via syslog.


Sudo 1.8.18p1

  • When sudo_noexec.so is used, the WRDE_NOCMD flag is now added if the wordexp() function is called. This prevents commands from being run via wordexp() without disabling it entirely.

  • On Linux systems, sudo_noexec.so now uses a seccomp filter to disable execute access if the kernel supports seccomp. This is more robust than the traditional method of using stub functions that return an error.


Sudo 1.8.18

  • The sudoers locale is now set before parsing the sudoers file. If sudoers_locale is set in sudoers, it is applied before evaluating other Defaults entries. Previously, sudoers_locale was used when evaluating sudoers but not during the initial parse. Bug #748.

  • A missing or otherwise invalid #includedir is now ignored instead of causing a parse error.

  • During make install, backup files are only used on HP-UX where it is not possible to unlink a shared object that is in use. This works around a bug in ldconfig on Linux which could create links to the backup shared library file instead of the current one.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.17 where sudoers entries with long commands lines could be truncated, preventing a match. Bug #752.

  • The fqdn, runas_default and sudoers_locale Defaults settings are now applied before any other Defaults settings since they can change how other Defaults settings are parsed.

  • On systems without the O_NOFOLLOW open(2) flag, when the NOFOLLOW flag is set, sudoedit now checks whether the file is a symbolic link before opening it as well as after the open. Bug #753.

  • Sudo will now only resolve a user’s group IDs to group names when sudoers includes group-based permissions. Group lookups can be expensive on some systems where the group database is not local.

  • If the file system holding the sudo log file is full, allow the command to run unless the new ignore_logfile_errors Defaults option is disabled. Bug #751.

  • The ignore_audit_errors and ignore_iolog_errors Defaults options have been added to control sudo’s behavior when it is unable to write to the audit and I/O logs.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.17 where the SIGPIPE signal handler was not being restored when sudo directly executes the command.

  • Fixed a bug where sudo -l command would indicate that a command was runnable even when denied by sudoers when using the LDAP or SSSD backends.

  • The match_group_by_gid Defaults option has been added to allow sites where group name resolution is slow and where sudoers only contains a small number of groups to match groups by group ID instead of by group name.

  • Fixed a bug on Linux where a 32-bit sudo binary could fail with an “unable to allocate memory” error when run on a 64-bit system. Bug #755.

  • When parsing ldap.conf, sudo will now only treat a ‘#’ character as the start of a comment when it is at the beginning of the line.

  • Fixed a potential crash when auditing is enabled and the audit function fails with an error. Bug #756.

  • Norwegian Nynorsk translation for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • Fixed a typo that broke short host name matching when the fqdn flag is enabled in sudoers. Bug #757.

  • Negated sudoHost attributes are now supported by the LDAP and SSSD backends.

  • Fixed matching entries in the LDAP and SSSD backends when a RunAsGroup is specified but no RunAsUser is present.

  • Fixed sudo -l output in the LDAP and SSSD backends when a RunAsGroup is specified but no RunAsUser is present.


Sudo 1.8.17p1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in 1.8.17 where the user’s groups were not set on systems that don’t use PAM. Bug #749.

Sudo 1.8.17

  • On AIX, if /etc/security/login.cfg has auth_type set to PAM_AUTH but pam_start(3) fails, fall back to AIX authentication. Bug #740.

  • Sudo now takes all sudoers sources into account when determining whether or not sudo -l or sudo -b should prompt for a password. In other words, if both file and ldap sudoers sources are in specified in /etc/nsswitch.conf, sudo -v will now require that all entries in both sources be have NOPASSWD (file) or !authenticate (ldap) in the entries.

  • Sudo now ignores SIGPIPE until the command is executed. Previously, SIGPIPE was only ignored in a few select places. Bug #739.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.14 where (non-syslog) log file entries were missing the newline when loglinelen is set to a non-positive number. Bug #742.

  • Unix groups are now set before the plugin session initialization code is run. This makes it possible to use dynamic groups with the Linux-PAM pam_group module.

  • Fixed a bug where a debugging statement could dereference a NULL pointer when looking up a group that doesn’t exist Bug #743.

  • Sudo has been run through the Coverity code scanner. A number of minor bugs have been fixed as a result. None were security issues.

  • SELinux support, which was broken in 1.8.16, has been repaired.

  • Fixed a bug when logging I/O where all output buffers might not get flushed at exit.

  • Forward slashes are no longer escaped in the JSON output of visudo -x. This was never required by the standard and not escaping them improves readability of the output.

  • Sudo no longer treats PAM_SESSION_ERR as a fatal error when opening the PAM session. Other errors from pam_open_session() are still treated as fatal. This avoids the “policy plugin failed session initialization” error message seen on some systems.

  • Korean translation for sudo and sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • The sssd backend now properly handles sudo -U otheruser -l.

  • The sssd backend now uses the value of ipa_hostname from sssd.conf, if specified.

  • Fixed a hang on some systems when the command is being run in a pty and it failed to execute.

  • When performing a wildcard match in sudoers, check for an exact string match if the user command was fully-qualified (or resolved via the PATH). This fixes an issue executing scripts on Linux when there are multiple wildcard matches with the same base name. Bug #746.


Sudo 1.8.16

  • Fixed a compilation error on Solaris 10 with Stun Studio 12. Bug #727.

  • When preserving variables from the invoking user’s environment, if there are duplicates sudo now only keeps the first instance.

  • Fixed a bug that could cause warning mail to be sent in list mode (sudo -l) for users without sudo privileges when the LDAP and SSSD backends are used.

  • Fixed a bug that prevented the mail_no_user option from working properly with the LDAP backend.

  • In the LDAP and SSSD backends, white space is now ignored between an operator (!, +, +=, -=) when parsing a sudoOption.

  • It is now possible to disable Path settings in sudo.conf by omitting the path name.

  • The sudoedit_checkdir Defaults option is now enabled by default and has been extended. When editing files with sudoedit, each directory in the path to be edited is now checked. If a directory is writable by the invoking user, symbolic links will not be followed. If the parent directory of the file to be edited is writable, sudoedit will refuse to edit it. Bug #707.

  • The netgroup_tuple Defaults option has been added to enable matching of the entire netgroup tuple, not just the host or user portion. Bug #717.

  • When matching commands based on the SHA2 digest, sudo will now use fexecve(2) to execute the command if it is available. This fixes a time of check versus time of use race condition when the directory holding the command is writable by the invoking user.

  • On AIX systems, sudo now caches the auth registry string along with password and group information. This fixes a potential problem when a user or group of the same name exists in multiple auth registries. For example, local and LDAP.

  • Fixed a crash in the SSSD backend when the invoking user is not found. Bug #732.

  • Added the --enable-asan configure flag to enable address sanitizer support. A few minor memory leaks have been plugged to quiet the ASAN leak detector.

  • The value of _PATH_SUDO_CONF may once again be overridden via Bug #735.

  • The sudoers2ldif script now handles multiple roles with same name.

  • Fixed a compilation error on systems that have the posix_spawn() and posix_spawnp() functions but an unusable spawn.h header. Bug #730.

  • Fixed support for negating character classes in sudo’s version of the fnmatch() function.

  • Fixed a bug in the LDAP and SSSD backends that could allow an unauthorized user to list another user’s privileges. Bug #738.

  • The PAM conversation function now works around an ambiguity in the PAM spec with respect to multiple messages. Bug #726.

  • Updated translations from translationproject.org.


Sudo 1.8.15

  • Fixed a bug that prevented sudo from building outside the source tree on some platforms. Bug #708.

  • Fixed the location of the sssd library in the RHEL/Centos packages. Bug #710.

  • Fixed a build problem on systems that don’t implicitly include sys/types.h from other header files. Bug #711.

  • Fixed a problem on Linux using containers where sudo would ignore signals sent by a process in a different container.

  • Sudo now refuses to run a command if the PAM session module returns an error.

  • When editing files with sudoedit, symbolic links will no longer be followed by default. The old behavior can be restored by enabling the sudoedit_follow option in sudoers or on a per-command basis with the FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW tags. Bug #707.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 1.8.14 that caused the last valid editor in the sudoers “editor” list to be used by visudo and sudoedit instead of the first. Bug #714.

  • Fixed a bug in visudo that prevented the addition of a final newline to edited files without one.

  • Fixed a bug decoding certain base64 digests in sudoers when the intermediate format included a ‘=’ character.

  • Individual records are now locked in the time stamp file instead of the entire file. This allows sudo to avoid prompting for a password multiple times on the same terminal when used in a pipeline. In other words, sudo cat foo | sudo grep bar now only prompts for the password once. Previously, both sudo processes would prompt for a password, often making it impossible to enter. Bug #705.

  • Fixed a bug where sudo would fail to run commands as a non-root user on systems that lack both setresuid() and setreuid(). Bug #713.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.14 that prevented visudo from re-editing the correct file when a syntax error was detected.

  • Fixed a bug where sudo would not relay a SIGHUP signal to the command when the terminal is closed and the command is not run in its own pseudo-tty. Bug #719.

  • If some, but not all, of the LOGNAME, USER or USERNAME environment variables have been preserved from the invoking user’s environment, sudo will now use the preserved value to set the remaining variables instead of using the runas user. This ensures that if, for example, only LOGNAME is present in the env_keep list, that sudo will not set USER and USERNAME to the runas user.

  • When the command sudo is running dies due to a signal, sudo will now send itself that same signal with the default signal handler installed instead of exiting. The bash shell appears to ignore some signals, e.g. SIGINT, unless the command being run is killed by that signal. This makes the behavior of commands run under sudo the same as without sudo when bash is the shell. Bug #722.

  • Slovak translation for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • Hungarian and Slovak translations for sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Previously, when env_reset was enabled (the default) and the -s option was not used, the SHELL environment variable was set to the shell of the invoking user. Now, when env_reset is enabled and the -s option is not used, SHELL is set based on the target user.

  • Fixed challenge/response style BSD authentication.

  • Added the sudoedit_checkdir Defaults option to prevent sudoedit from editing files located in a directory that is writable by the invoking user.

  • Added the always_query_group_plugin Defaults option to control whether groups not found in the system group database are passed to the group plugin. Previously, unknown system groups were always passed to the group plugin.

  • When creating a new file, sudoedit will now check that the file’s parent directory exists before running the editor.

  • Fixed the compiler stack protector test in configure for compilers that support -fstack-protector but don’t actually have the ssp library available.


Sudo 1.8.14p3

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.14p2 that prevented sudo from working when no tty was present. Bug #706.

  • Fixed tty detection on newer AIX systems where dev_t is 64-bit.


Sudo 1.8.14p2

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.14 that prevented the lecture file from being created. Bug #704.

Sudo 1.8.14p1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.14 that prevented the sssd backend from working. Bug #703.

Sudo 1.8.14

  • Log messages on Mac OS X now respect sudoers_locale when sudo is build with NLS support.

  • The sudo manual pages now pass mandoc -Tlint with no warnings.

  • Fixed a compilation problem on systems with the sig2str() function that do not define SIG2STR_MAX in signal.h.

  • Worked around a compiler bug that resulted in unexpected behavior when returning an int from a function declared to return bool without an explicit cast.

  • Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.10 BSD auditing where the au_preselect() fails for AUE_sudo events but succeeds for AUE_DARWIN_sudo.

  • Fixed a hang on Linux systems with glibc when sudo is linked with jemalloc.

  • When the user runs a command as a user ID that is not present in the password database via the -u flag, the command is now run with the group ID of the invoking user instead of group ID 0.

  • Fixed a compilation problem on systems that don’t pull in definitions of uid_t and gid_t without sys/types.h or unistd.h.

  • Fixed a compilation problem on newer AIX systems which use a struct st_timespec for time stamps in struct stat that differs from struct timespec. Bug #702.

  • The example directory is now configurable via --with-exampledir and defaults to DATAROOTDIR/examples/sudo on BSD systems.

  • The /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/sudo.conf file is now installed as part of make install when systemd is in use.

  • Fixed a linker problem on some systems with libintl. Bug #690.

  • Fixed compilation with compilers that don’t support __func__ or __FUNCTION__.

  • Sudo no longer needs to uses weak symbols to support localization in the warning functions. A registration function is used instead.

  • Fixed a setresuid() failure in sudoers on Linux kernels where uid changes take the nproc resource limit into account.

  • Fixed LDAP netgroup queries on AIX.

  • Sudo will now display the custom prompt on Linux systems with PAM even if the “Password: " prompt is not localized by the PAM module. Bug #701.

  • Double-quoted values in an LDAP sudoOption are now supported for consistency with file-based sudoers.

  • Fixed a bug that prevented the btime entry in /proc/stat from being parsed on Linux.


Sudo 1.8.13

  • The examples directory is now a subdirectory of the doc dir to conform to Debian guidelines. Bug #682.

  • Fixed a compilation error for siglist.c and signame.c on some systems. Bug #686.

  • Weak symbols are now used for sudo_warn_gettext() and sudo_warn_strerror() in libsudo_util to avoid link errors when -Wl,–no-undefined is used in LDFLAGS. The --disable-weak-symbols configure option can be used to disable the user of weak symbols.

  • Fixed a bug in sudo’s mkstemps() replacement function that prevented the file extension from being preserved in sudoedit.

  • A new mail_all_cmnds sudoers option will send mail when a user runs a command (or tries to). The behavior of the mail_always flag has been restored to always send mail when sudo is run.

  • New MAIL and NOMAIL command tags have been added to toggle mail sending behavior on a per-command (or Cmnd_Alias) basis.

  • Fixed matching of empty passwords when sudo is configured to use passwd (or shadow) file authentication on systems where the crypt() function returns NULL for invalid salts.

  • On AIX, sudo now uses the value of the auth_type setting in /etc/security/login.cfg to determine whether to use LAM or PAM for user authentication.

  • The all setting for listpw and verifypw now works correctly with LDAP and sssd sudoers.

  • The sudo timestamp directory is now created at boot time on platforms that use systemd.

  • Sudo will now restore the value of the SIGPIPE handler before executing the command.

  • Sudo now uses struct timespec instead of struct timeval for time keeping when possible. If supported, sudoedit and visudo now use nanosecond granularity time stamps.

  • Fixed a symbol name collision with systems that have their own SHA2 implementation. This fixes a problem where PAM could use the wrong SHA2 implementation on Solaris 10 systems configured to use SHA512 for passwords.

  • The editor invoked by sudoedit once again uses an unmodified copy of the user’s environment as per the documentation. This was inadvertently changed in sudo 1.8.0. Bug #688.


Sudo 1.8.12

  • The embedded copy of zlib has been upgraded to version 1.2.8 and is now installed as a shared library where supported.

  • Debug settings for the sudo front end and sudoers plugin are now configured separately.

  • Multiple sudo.conf Debug entries may now be specified per program (or plugin).

  • The plugin API has been extended such that the path to the plugin that was loaded is now included in the settings array. This path can be used to register with the debugging subsystem. The debug_flags setting is now prefixed with a file name and may be specified multiple times if there is more than one matching Debug setting in sudo.conf.

  • The sudoers regression tests now run with the locale set to C since some of the tests compare output that includes locale-specific messages. Bug #672.

  • Fixed a bug where sudo would not run commands on Linux when compiled with audit support if audit is disabled. Bug #671.

  • Added __BASH_FUNC to the environment blacklist to match Apple’s syntax for newer-style bash functions.

  • The default password prompt now includes a trailing space after “Password:” for consistency with su(1) on most systems. Bug #663.

  • Fixed a problem on DragonFly BSD where SIGCHLD could be ignored, preventing sudo from exiting. Bug #676.

  • Visudo will now use the optional sudoers_file, sudoers_mode, sudoers_uid and sudoers_gid arguments if specified on the sudoers.so Plugin line in the sudo.conf file.

  • Fixed a problem introduced in sudo 1.8.8 that prevented the full host name from being used when the fqdn sudoers option is used. Bug #678.

  • French and Russian translations for sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Sudo now installs a handler for SIGCHLD signal handler immediately before stating the process that will execute the command (or start the monitor). The handler used to be installed earlier but this causes problems with poorly behaved PAM modules that install their own SIGCHLD signal handler and neglect to restore sudo’s original handler. Bug #657.

  • Removed a limit on the length of command line arguments expanded by a wild card using sudo’s version of the fnmatch() function. This limit was introduced when sudo’s version of fnmatch() was replaced in sudo 1.8.4.

  • LDAP-based sudoers can now query an LDAP server for a user’s netgroups directly. This is often much faster than fetching every sudoRole object containing a sudoUser that begins with a `+’ prefix and checking whether the user is a member of any of the returned netgroups.

  • The mail_always sudoers option no longer sends mail for sudo -l or sudo -v unless the user is unable to authenticate themselves.

  • Fixed a crash when sudo is run with an empty argument vector.

  • Fixed two potential crashes when sudo is run with very low resource limits.

  • The TZ environment variable is now checked for safety instead of simply being copied to the environment of the command. This fixes a potential security issue.


Sudo 1.8.11p2

  • Fixed a bug where dynamic shared objects loaded from a plugin could use the hooked version of getenv() but not the hooked versions of putenv(), setenv() or unsetenv(). This can cause problems for PAM modules that use those functions.

Sudo 1.8.11p1

  • Fixed a compilation problem on some systems when the --disable-shared-libutil configure option was specified.

  • The user can no longer interrupt the sleep after an incorrect password on PAM systems using pam_unix. Bug #666.

  • Fixed a compilation problem on Linux systems that do not use PAM. Bug #667.

  • make install will now work with the stock GNU autotools install-sh script. Bug #669.

  • Fixed a crash with sudo -i when the current working directory does not exist. Bug #670.

  • Fixed a potential crash in the debug subsystem when logging a message larger that 1024 bytes.

  • Fixed a make check failure for ttyname when stdin is closed and stdout and stderr are redirected to a different tty. Bug #643.

  • Added BASH_FUNC_* to environment blacklist to match newer-style bash functions.


Sudo 1.8.11

  • The sudoers plugin no longer uses setjmp/longjmp to recover from fatal errors. All errors are now propagated to the caller via return codes.

  • When running a command in the background, sudo will now forward SIGINFO to the command (if supported).

  • Sudo will now use the system versions of the sha2 functions from libc or libmd if available.

  • Visudo now works correctly on GNU Hurd. Bug #647.

  • Fixed suspend and resume of curses programs on some system when the command is not being run in a pseudo-terminal. Bug #649.

  • Fixed a crash with LDAP-based sudoers on some systems when Kerberos was enabled.

  • Sudo now includes optional Solaris audit support.

  • Catalan translation for sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Norwegian Bokmaal translation for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • Greek translation for sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • The sudo source tree has been reorganized to more closely resemble that of other gettext-enabled packages.

  • Sudo and its associated programs now link against a shared version of libsudo_util. The --disable-shared-libutil configure option may be used to force static linking if the --enable-static-sudoers option is also specified.

  • The passwords in ldap.conf and ldap.secret may now be encoded in base64.

  • Audit updates. SELinux role changes are now audited. For sudoedit, we now audit the actual editor being run, instead of just the sudoedit command.

  • Fixed bugs in the man page post-processing that could cause portions of the manuals to be removed.

  • Fixed a crash in the system_group plugin. Bug #653.

  • Fixed sudoedit on platforms without a native version of the getprogname() function. Bug #654.

  • Fixed compilation problems with some pre-C99 compilers.

  • Fixed sudo’s -C option which was broken in version 1.8.9.

  • It is now possible to match an environment variable’s value as well as its name using env_keep and env_check. This can be used to preserve bash functions which would otherwise be removed from the environment.

  • New files created via sudoedit as a non-root user now have the proper group id. Bug #656.

  • Sudoedit now works correctly in conjunction with sudo’s SELinux RBAC support. Temporary files are now created with the proper security context.

  • The sudo I/O logging plugin API has been updated. If a logging function returns an error, the command will be terminated and all of the plugin’s logging functions will be disabled. If a logging function rejects the command’s output it will no longer be displayed to the user’s terminal.

  • Fixed a compilation error on systems that lack openpty(), _getpty() and grantpt(). Bug #660.

  • Fixed a hang when a sudoers source is listed more than once in a single sudoers nsswitch.conf entry.

  • On AIX, shell scripts without a #! magic number are now passed to /usr/bin/sh, not /usr/bin/bsh. This is consistent with what the execvp() function on AIX does and matches historic sudo behavior. Bug #661.

  • Fixed a cross-compilation problem building mksiglist and mksigname. Bug #662.


Sudo 1.8.10p3

  • Fixed expansion of the %p escape in the prompt for sudo -l when rootpw, runaspw or targetpw is set. Bug #639.

  • Fixed matching of uids and gids which was broken in version 1.8.9. Bug #640.

  • PAM credential initialization has been re-enabled. It was unintentionally disabled by default in version 1.8.8. The way credentials are initialized has also been fixed. Bug #642.

  • Fixed a descriptor leak on Linux when determining boot time. Sudo normally closes extra descriptors before running a command so the impact is limited. Bug #645.

  • Fixed flushing of the last buffer of data when I/O logging is enabled. This bug, introduced in version 1.8.9, could cause incomplete command output on some systems. Bug #646.


Sudo 1.8.10p2

  • Fixed a hang introduced in sudo 1.8.10 when timestamp_timeout is set to zero. Bug #638.

Sudo 1.8.10p1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.10 that prevented the disabling of tty-based tickets.

  • Fixed a bug with netgated commands in sudo -l command that could cause the command to be listed even when it was explicitly denied. This only affected list mode when a command was specified. Bug #636.


Sudo 1.8.10

  • It is now possible to disable network interface probing in sudo.conf by changing the value of the probe_interfaces setting.

  • When listing a user’s privileges (sudo -l), the sudoers plugin will now prompt for the user’s password even if the targetpw, rootpw or runaspw options are set.

  • The sudoers plugin uses a new format for its time stamp files. Each user now has a single file which may contain multiple records when per-tty time stamps are in use (the default). The time stamps use a monotonic timer where available and are once again located in a directory under /var/run. The lecture status is now stored separately from the time stamps in a different directory. Bug #616.

  • sudo’s -K option will now remove all of the user’s time stamps, not just the time stamp for the current terminal. The -k option can be used to only disable time stamps for the current terminal.

  • If sudo was started in the background and needed to prompt for a password, it was not possible to suspend it at the password prompt. This now works properly.

  • LDAP-based sudoers now uses a default search filter of (objectClass=sudoRole) for more efficient queries. The netgroup query has been modified to avoid falling below the minimum length for OpenLDAP substring indices.

  • The new use_netgroups sudoers option can be used to explicitly enable or disable netgroups support. For LDAP-based sudoers, netgroup support requires an expensive substring match on the server. If netgroups are not needed, this option can be disabled to reduce the load on the LDAP server.

  • Sudo is once again able to open the sudoers file when the group on sudoers doesn’t match the expected value, so long as the file is not group writable.

  • Sudo now installs an init.d script to clear the time stamp directory at boot time on AIX and HP-UX systems. These systems either lack /var/run or do not clear it on boot.

  • The JSON format used by visudo -x now properly supports the negation operator. In addition, the Options object is now the same for both Defaults and Cmnd_Specs.

  • Czech and Serbian translations for sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Catalan translation for sudo from translationproject.org.


Sudo 1.8.9p5

  • Fixed a compilation error on AIX when LDAP support is enabled.

  • Fixed parsing of the umask defaults setting in sudoers. Bug #632.

  • Fixed a failed assertion when the closefrom_override defaults setting is enabled in sudoers and sudo’s -C flag is used. Bug #633.


Sudo 1.8.9p4

  • Fixed a bug where sudo could consume large amounts of CPU while the command was running when I/O logging is not enabled. Bug #631.

  • Fixed a bug where sudo would exit with an error when the debug level is set to util@debug or all@debug and I/O logging is not enabled. The command would continue running after sudo exited.


Sudo 1.8.9p3

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.9 that prevented the tty name from being resolved properly on Linux systems. Bug #630.

Sudo 1.8.9p2

  • Updated config.guess, config.sub and libtool to support the ppc64le architecture (IBM PowerPC Little Endian).

Sudo 1.8.9p1

  • Fixed a problem with gcc 4.8’s handling of bit fields that could lead to the noexec flag being enabled even when it was not explicitly set.

Sudo 1.8.9

  • Reworked sudo’s main event loop to use a simple event subsystem using poll(2) or select(2) as the back end.

  • It is now possible to statically compile the sudoers plugin into the sudo binary without disabling shared library support. The sudo.conf file may still be used to configure other plugins.

  • Sudo can now be compiled again with a C preprocessor that does not support variadic macros.

  • Visudo can now export a sudoers file in JSON format using the new -x flag.

  • The locale is now set correctly again for visudo and sudoreplay.

  • The plugin API has been extended to allow the plugin to exclude specific file descriptors from the closefrom range.

  • There is now a workaround for a Solaris-specific problem where NOEXEC was overriding traditional root DAC behavior.

  • Add user netgroup filtering for SSSD. Previously, rules for a netgroup were applied to all even when they did not belong to the specified netgroup.

  • On systems with BSD login classes, if the user specified a group (not a user) to run the command as, it was possible to specify a different login class even when the command was not run as the super user.

  • The closefrom() emulation on Mac OS X now uses /dev/fd if possible.

  • Fixed a bug where sudoedit would not update the original file from the temporary when PAM or I/O logging is not enabled.

  • When recycling I/O logs, the log files are now truncated properly.

  • Fixes bugs #617, #621, #622, #623, #624, #625, #626


Sudo 1.8.8

  • Removed a warning on PAM systems with stacked auth modules where the first module on the stack does not succeed.

  • Sudo, sudoreplay and visudo now support GNU-style long options.

  • The -h (--host) option may now be used to specify a host name. This is currently only used by the sudoers plugin in conjunction with the -l (--list) option.

  • Program usage messages and manual SYNOPSIS sections have been simplified.

  • Sudo’s LDAP SASL support now works properly with Kerberos. Previously, the SASL library was unable to locate the user’s credential cache.

  • It is now possible to set the nproc resource limit to unlimited via pam_limits on Linux (bug #565).

  • New pam_service and pam_login_service sudoers options that can be used to specify the PAM service name to use.

  • New pam_session and pam_setcred sudoers options that can be used to disable PAM session and credential support.

  • The sudoers plugin now properly supports UIDs and GIDs that are larger than 0x7fffffff on 32-bit platforms.

  • Fixed a visudo bug introduced in sudo 1.8.7 where per-group Defaults entries would cause an internal error.

  • If the tty_tickets sudoers option is enabled (the default), but there is no tty present, sudo will now use a ticket file based on the parent process ID. This makes it possible to support the normal timeout behavior for the session.

  • Fixed a problem running commands that change their process group and then attempt to change the terminal settings when not running the command in a pseudo-terminal. Previously, the process would receive SIGTTOU since it was effectively a background process. Sudo will now grant the child the controlling tty and continue it when this happens.

  • The closefrom_override sudoers option may now be used in a command-specified Defaults entry (bug #610).

  • Sudo’s BSM audit support now works on Solaris 11.

  • Brazilian Portuguese translation for sudo and sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Czech translation for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • French translation for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • Sudo’s noexec support on Mac OS X 10.4 and above now uses dynamic symbol interposition instead of setting DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1 which causes issues with some programs.

  • Fixed visudo’s -q (--quiet) flag, broken in sudo 1.8.6.

  • Root may no longer change its SELinux role without entering a password.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in Sudo 1.8.7 where the indexes written to the I/O log timing file are two greater than they should be. Sudoreplay now contains a work-around to parse those files.

  • In sudoreplay’s list mode, the this qualifier in fromdate or todate expressions now behaves more sensibly. Previously, it would often match a date that was “one more” than expected. For example, “this week” now matches the current week instead of the following week.


Sudo 1.8.7

  • The non-Unix group plugin is now supported when sudoers data is stored in LDAP.

  • Sudo now uses a workaround for a locale bug on Solaris 11.0 that prevents setuid programs like sudo from fully using locales.

  • User messages are now always displayed in the user’s locale, even when the same message is being logged or mailed in a different locale.

  • Log files created by sudo now explicitly have the group set to group ID 0 rather than relying on BSD group semantics (which may not be the default).

  • A new exec_background sudoers option can be used to initially run the command without read access to the terminal when running a command in a pseudo-tty. If the command tries to read from the terminal it will be stopped by the kernel (via SIGTTIN or SIGTTOU) and sudo will immediately restart it as the foreground process (if possible). This allows sudo to only pass terminal input to the program if the program actually is expecting it. Unfortunately, a few poorly-behaved programs (like su on most Linux systems) do not handle SIGTTIN and SIGTTOU properly.

  • Sudo now uses an efficient group query to get all the groups for a user instead of iterating over every record in the group database on HP-UX and Solaris.

  • Sudo now produces better error messages when there is an error in the sudo.conf file.

  • Two new settings have been added to sudo.conf to give the admin better control of how group database queries are performed. The group_source specifies how the group list for a user will be determined. Legal values are static (use the kernel groups list), dynamic (perform a group database query) and adaptive (only perform a group database query if the kernel list is full). The max_groups setting specifies the maximum number of groups a user may belong to when performing a group database query.

  • The sudo.conf file now supports line continuation by using a backslash as the last character on the line.

  • There is now a standalone sudo.conf manual page.

  • Sudo now stores its libexec files in a sudo subdirectory instead of in libexec itself. For backwards compatibility, if the plugin is not found in the default plugin directory, sudo will check the parent directory if the default directory ends in /sudo.

  • The sudoers I/O logging plugin now logs the terminal size.

  • A new sudoers option maxseq can be used to limit the number of I/O log entries that are stored.

  • The system_group and group_file sudoers group provider plugins are now installed by default.

  • The list output (sudo -l) output from the sudoers plugin is now less ambiguous when an entry includes different runas users. The long list output (sudo -ll) for file-based sudoers is now more consistent with the format of LDAP-based sudoers.

  • A uid may now be used in the sudoRunAsUser attributes for LDAP sudoers.

  • Minor plugin API change: the close and version functions are now optional. If the policy plugin does not provide a close function and the command is not being run in a new pseudo-tty, sudo may now execute the command directly instead of in a child process.

  • A new sudoers option pam_session can be used to disable sudo’s PAM session support.

  • On HP-UX systems, sudo will now use the pstat() function to determine the tty instead of ttyname().

  • Turkish translation for sudo and sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Dutch translation for sudo and sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Tivoli Directory Server client libraries may now be used with HP-UX where libibmldap has a hidden dependency on libCsup.

  • The sudoers plugin will now ignore invalid domain names when checking netgroup membership. Most Linux systems use the string “(none)” for the NIS-style domain name instead of an empty string.

  • New support for specifying a SHA-2 digest along with the command in sudoers. Supported hash types are sha224, sha256, sha384 and sha512. See the description of Digest_Spec in the sudoers manual or the description of sudoCommand in the sudoers.ldap manual for details.

  • The paths to ldap.conf and ldap.secret may now be specified as arguments to the sudoers plugin in the sudo.conf file.

  • Fixed potential false positives in visudo’s alias cycle detection.

  • Fixed a problem where the time stamp file was being treated as out of date on Linux systems where the change time on the pseudo-tty device node can change after it is allocated.

  • Sudo now only builds Position Independent Executables (PIE) by default on Linux systems and verifies that a trivial test program builds and runs.

  • On Solaris 11.1 and higher, sudo binaries will now have the ASLR tag enabled if supported by the linker.


Sudo 1.8.6p8

  • Terminal detection now works properly on 64-bit AIX kernels. This was broken by the removal of the ttyname() fallback in Sudo 1.8.6p6. Sudo is now able to map an AIX 64-bit device number to the corresponding device file in /dev.

  • Sudo now checks for crypt() returning NULL when performing passwd-based authentication.


Sudo 1.8.6p7

  • A time stamp file with the date set to the epoch by sudo -k is now completely ignored regardless of what the local clock is set to. Previously, if the local clock was set to a value between the epoch and the time stamp timeout value, a time stamp reset by sudo -k would be considered current.

    This is a potential security issue.

  • The tty-specific time stamp file now includes the session ID of the sudo process that created it. If a process with the same tty but a different session ID runs sudo, the user will now be prompted for a password (assuming authentication is required for the command).

    This is a potential security issue.


Sudo 1.8.6p6

  • On systems where the controlling tty can be determined via /proc or sysctl(), sudo will no longer fall back to using ttyname() if the process has no controlling tty. This prevents sudo from using a non-controlling tty for logging and time stamp purposes.

    This is a potential security issue.


Sudo 1.8.6p5

  • Fixed a potential crash in visudo’s alias cycle detection.

  • Improved performance on Solaris when retrieving the group list for the target user. On systems with a large number of groups where the group database is not local (NIS, LDAP, AD), fetching the group list could take a minute or more.


Sudo 1.8.6p4

  • The -fstack-protector is now used when linking visudo, sudoreplay and testsudoers.

  • Avoid building PIE binaries on FreeBSD/ia64 as they don’t run properly.

  • Fixed a crash in visudo strict mode when an unknown Defaults setting is encountered.

  • Do not inform the user that the command was not permitted by the policy if they do not successfully authenticate. This is a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.6.

  • Allow sudo to be build with sss support without also including ldap support.

  • Fix running commands that need the terminal in the background when I/O logging is enabled. E.g. sudo vi &. When the command is foregrounded, it will now resume properly.


Sudo 1.8.6p3

  • Fixed post-processing of the man pages on systems with legacy versions of sed.

  • Fixed sudoreplay -l on Linux systems with file systems that set DT_UNKNOWN in the d_type field of struct dirent.


Sudo 1.8.6p2

  • Fixed suspending a command after it has already been resumed once when I/O logging (or use_pty) is not enabled. This was a regression introduced in version 1.8.6.

Sudo 1.8.6p1

  • Fixed the setting of LOGNAME, USER and USERNAME variables in the command’s environment when env_reset is enabled (the default). This was a regression introduced in version 1.8.6.

  • Sudo now honors “SUCCESS=return” in /etc/nsswitch.conf.


Sudo 1.8.6

  • Sudo is now built with the -fstack-protector flag if the the compiler supports it. Also, the -zrelro linker flag is used if supported. The --disable-hardening configure option can be used to build sudo without stack smashing protection.

  • Sudo is now built as a Position Independent Executable (PIE) if supported by the compiler and linker.

  • If the user is a member of the exempt group in sudoers, they will no longer be prompted for a password even if the -k flag is specified with the command. This makes sudo -k command consistent with the behavior one would get if the user ran sudo -k immediately before running the command.

  • The sudoers file may now be a symbolic link. Previously, sudo would refuse to read sudoers unless it was a regular file.

  • The sudoreplay command can now properly replay sessions where no tty was present.

  • The sudoers plugin now takes advantage of symbol visibility controls when supported by the compiler or linker. As a result, only a small number of symbols are exported which significantly reduces the chances of a conflict with other shared objects.

  • Improved support for the Tivoli Directory Server LDAP client libraries. This includes support for using LDAP over SSL (ldaps) as well as support for the BIND_TIMELIMIT, TLS_KEY and TLS_CIPHERS ldap.conf options. A new ldap.conf option, TLS_KEYPW can be used to specify a password to decrypt the key database.

  • When constructing a time filter for use with LDAP sudoNotBefore and sudoNotAfter attributes, the current time now includes tenths of a second. This fixes a problem with timed entries on Active Directory.

  • If a user fails to authenticate and the command would be rejected by sudoers, it is now logged with command not allowed instead of N incorrect password attempts. Likewise, the mail_no_perms sudoers option now takes precedence over mail_badpass

  • The sudo manuals are now formatted using the mdoc macros. Versions using the legacy man macros are provided for systems that lack mdoc.

  • New support for Solaris privilege sets. This makes it possible to specify fine-grained privileges in the sudoers file on Solaris 10 and above. A Runas_Spec that contains no Runas_Lists can be used to give a user the ability to run a command as themselves but with an expanded privilege set.

  • Fixed a problem with the reboot and shutdown commands on some systems (such as HP-UX and BSD). On these systems, reboot sends all processes (except itself) SIGTERM. When sudo received SIGTERM, it would relay it to the reboot process, thus killing reboot before it had a chance to actually reboot the system.

  • Support for using the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) as a source of sudoers data.

  • Slovenian translation for sudo and sudoers from translationproject.org.

  • Visudo will now warn about unknown Defaults entries that are per-host, per-user, per-runas or per-command.

  • Fixed a race condition that could cause sudo to receive SIGTTOU (and stop) when resuming a shell that was run via sudo when I/O logging (and use_pty) is not enabled.

  • Sending SIGTSTP directly to the sudo process will now suspend the running command when I/O logging (and use_pty) is not enabled.


Sudo 1.8.5p3

  • Fixed the loading of I/O plugins that conform to a plugin API version older than 1.2.

Sudo 1.8.5p2

  • Fixed use of the SUDO_ASKPASS environment variable which was broken in Sudo 1.8.5.

  • Fixed a problem reading the sudoers file when the file mode is more restrictive than the expected mode. For example, when the expected sudoers file mode is 0440 but the actual mode is 0400.


Sudo 1.8.5p1

  • Fixed a bug that prevented files in an include directory from being evaluated.

Sudo 1.8.5

  • When noexec is enabled, sudo_noexec.so will now be prepended to any existing LD_PRELOAD variable instead of replacing it.

  • The sudo_noexec.so shared library now wraps the execvpe(), exect(), posix_spawn() and posix_spawnp() functions.

  • The user/group/mode checks on sudoers files have been relaxed. As long as the file is owned by the sudoers uid, not world-writable and not writable by a group other than the sudoers gid, the file is considered OK. Note that visudo will still set the mode to the value specified at configure time.

  • It is now possible to specify the sudoers path, uid, gid and file mode as options to the plugin in the sudo.conf file.

  • Croatian, Galician, German, Lithuanian, Swedish and Vietnamese translations from translationproject.org.

  • /etc/environment is no longer read directly on Linux systems when PAM is used. Sudo now merges the PAM environment into the user’s environment which is typically set by the pam_env module.

  • The initial environment created when env_reset is in effect now includes the contents of /etc/environment on AIX systems and the setenv and path entries from /etc/login.conf on BSD systems.

  • The plugin API has been extended in three ways. First, options specified in sudo.conf after the plugin pathname are passed to the plugin’s open function. Second, sudo has limited support for hooks that can be used by plugins. Currently, the hooks are limited to environment handling functions. Third, the init_session policy plugin function is passed a pointer to the user environment which can be updated during session setup. The plugin API version has been incremented to version 1.2. See the sudo_plugin manual for more information.

  • The policy plugin’s init_session function is now called by the parent sudo process, not the child process that executes the command. This allows the PAM session to be open and closed in the same process, which some PAM modules require.

  • Fixed parsing of “Path askpass” and “Path noexec” in sudo.conf, which was broken in version 1.8.4.

  • On systems with an SVR4-style /proc file system, the /proc/pid/psinfo file is now uses to determine the controlling terminal, if possible. This allows tty-based tickets to work properly even when, e.g. standard input, output and error are redirected to /dev/null.

  • The output of sudoreplay -l is now sorted by file name (or sequence number). Previously, entries were displayed in the order in which they were found on the file system.

  • Sudo now behaves properly when I/O logging is enabled and the controlling terminal is revoked (e.g. the running sshd is killed). Previously, sudo may have exited without calling the I/O plugin’s close function which can lead to an incomplete I/O log.

  • Sudo can now detect when a user has logged out and back in again on Solaris 11, just like it can on Solaris 10.

  • The built-in zlib included with Sudo has been upgraded to version 1.2.6.

  • Setting the SSL parameter to start_tls in ldap.conf now works properly when using Mozilla-based SDKs that support the ldap_start_tls_s() function.

  • The TLS_CHECKPEER parameter in ldap.conf now works when the Mozilla NSS crypto backend is used with OpenLDAP.

  • A new group provider plugin, system_group, is included which performs group look ups by name using the system groups database. This can be used to restore the pre-1.7.3 sudo group lookup behavior.


Sudo 1.8.4p5

  • Fixed a potential security issue in the matching of hosts against an IPv4 network specified in sudoers. The flaw may allow a user who is authorized to run commands on hosts belonging to one IPv4 network to run commands on a different host.

Sudo 1.8.4p4

  • Fixed a bug introduced in Sudo 1.8.4 which prevented sudo -v from working.

Sudo 1.8.4p3

  • Fixed a crash on FreeBSD when there is no tty present.

  • When visudo is run with the -c (check) option, the sudoers file(s) owner and mode are now also checked unless the -f option was specified.


Sudo 1.8.4p2

  • Fixed a bug introduced in Sudo 1.8.4 where insufficient space was allocated for group IDs in the LDAP filter.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in Sudo 1.8.4 where the path to sudo.conf was /sudo.conf instead of etc/sudo.conf.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in Sudo 1.8.4 which could cause a hang when I/O logging is enabled and input is from a pipe or file.


Sudo 1.8.4p1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.8.4 that broke adding to or deleting from the env_keep, _env_chec_k and _env_delet_e lists in sudoers on some platforms.

Sudo 1.8.4

  • The -D flag in sudo has been replaced with a more general debugging framework that is configured in sudo.conf.

  • Fixed a false positive in visudo strict mode when aliases are in use.

  • Fixed a crash with sudo -i when a runas group was specified without a runas user.

  • The line on which a syntax error is reported in the sudoers file is now more accurate. Previously it was often off by a line.

  • Fixed a bug where stack garbage could be printed at the end of the lecture when the lecture_file option was enabled.

  • make install now honors the LINGUAS environment variable.

  • The #include and #includedir directives in sudoers now support relative paths. If the path is not fully qualified it is expected to be located in the same directory of the sudoers file that is including it.

  • New Serbian and Spanish translations for sudo from translationproject.org.

  • LDAP-based sudoers may now access by group ID in addition to group name.

  • visudo will now fix the mode on the sudoers file even if no changes are made unless the -f option is specified.

  • The use_loginclass sudoers option works properly again.

  • On systems that use login.conf, sudo -i now sets environment variables based on login.conf.

  • For LDAP-based sudoers, values in the search expression are now escaped as per RFC 4515.

  • The plugin close function is now properly called when a login session is killed (as opposed to the actual command being killed). This can happen when an ssh session is disconnected or the terminal window is closed.

  • The deprecated noexec_file sudoers option is no longer supported.

  • Fixed a race condition when I/O logging is not enabled that could result in tty-generated signals (e.g. control-C) being received by the command twice.

  • If none of the standard input, output or error are connected to a tty device, sudo will now check its parent’s standard input, output or error for the tty name on systems with /proc and BSD systems that support the KERN_PROC_PID sysctl. This allows tty-based tickets to work properly even when, e.g. standard input, output and error are redirected to /dev/null.

  • Added the --enable-kerb5-instance configure option to allow people using Kerberos V authentication to specify a custom instance so the principal name can be, e.g. “username/sudo” similar to how ksu uses “username/root”.

  • Fixed a bug where a pattern like /usr/* included /usr/bin/ in the results, which would be incorrectly be interpreted as if the sudoers file had specified a directory.

  • visudo -c will now list any include files that were checked in addition to the main sudoers file when everything parses OK.

  • Users that only have read-only access to the sudoers file may now run visudo -c. Previously, write permissions were required even though no writing is down in check-only mode.

  • It is now possible to prevent the disabling of core dumps from within sudo itself by adding a line to the sudo.conf file like Set disable_coredump false.


Sudo 1.8.3p2

  • Fixed a format string vulnerability when the sudo binary (or a symbolic link to the sudo binary) contains printf format escapes and the -D (debugging) flag is used.

Sudo 1.8.3p1

  • Fixed a crash in the monitor process on Solaris when NOPASSWD was specified or when authentication was disabled.

  • Fixed matching of a Runas_Alias in the group section of a Runas_Spec.


Sudo 1.8.3

  • Fixed expansion of strftime() escape sequences in the log_dir sudoers setting.

  • Esperanto, Italian and Japanese translations from translationproject.org.

  • Sudo will now use PAM by default on AIX 6 and higher.

  • Added --enable-werror configure option for gcc’s -Werror flag.

  • Visudo no longer assumes all editors support the +linenumber command line argument. It now uses a whitelist of editors known to support the option.

  • Fixed matching of network addresses when a netmask is specified but the address is not the first one in the CIDR block.

  • The configure script now check whether or not errno.h declares the errno variable. Previously, sudo would always declare errno itself for older systems that don’t declare it in errno.h.

  • The NOPASSWD tag is now honored for denied commands too, which matches historic sudo behavior (prior to sudo 1.7.0).

  • Sudo now honors the DEREF setting in ldap.conf which controls how alias dereferencing is done during an LDAP search.

  • A symbol conflict with the pam_ssh_agent_auth PAM module that would cause a crash been resolved.

  • The inability to load a group provider plugin is no longer a fatal error.

  • A potential crash in the utmp handling code has been fixed.

  • Two PAM session issues have been resolved. In previous versions of sudo, the PAM session was opened as one user and closed as another. Additionally, if no authentication was performed, the PAM session would never be closed.

  • Sudo will now work correctly with LDAP-based sudoers using TLS or SSL on Debian systems.

  • The LOGNAME, USER and USERNAME environment variables are preserved correctly again in sudoedit mode.


Sudo 1.8.2

  • Sudo, visudo, sudoreplay and the sudoers plug-in now have natural language support (NLS). Sudo will use gettext(), if available, to display translated messages. This can be disabled by passing configure the --disable-nls option. All translations are coordinated via The Translation Project, translationproject.org. Sudo 1.8.2 includes translations for Basque, Chinese (simplified), Danish, Finish, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian.

  • Plug-ins are now loaded with the RTLD_GLOBAL flag instead of RTLD_LOCAL. This fixes missing symbol problems in PAM modules on certain platforms, such as FreeBSD and SuSE Linux Enterprise.

  • I/O logging is now supported for commands run in background mode (using sudo’s -b flag).

  • Group ownership of the sudoers file is now only enforced when the file mode on sudoers allows group readability or writability.

  • Visudo now checks the contents of an alias and warns about cycles when the alias is expanded.

  • If the user specifees a group via sudo’s -g option that matches the target user’s group in the password database, it is now allowed even if no groups are present in the Runas_Spec.

  • The sudo Makefiles now have more complete dependencies which are automatically generated instead of being maintained manually.

  • The use_pty sudoers option is now correctly passed back to the sudo front end. This was missing in previous versions of sudo 1.8 which prevented use_pty from being honored.

  • sudo -i command now works correctly with the bash version 2.0 and higher. Previously, the .bash_profile would not be sourced prior to running the command unless bash was built with NON_INTERACTIVE_LOGIN_SHELLS defined.

  • When matching groups in the sudoers file, sudo will now match based on the name of the group instead of the group ID. This can substantially reduce the number of group lookups for sudoers files that contain a large number of groups.

  • Multi-factor authentication is now supported on AIX.

  • Added support for non-RFC 4517 compliant LDAP servers that require that seconds be present in a timestamp, such as Tivoli Directory Server.

  • If the group vector is to be preserved, the PATH search for the command is now done with the user’s original group vector.

  • For LDAP-based sudoers, the runas_default sudoOption now works properly in a sudoRole that contains a sudoCommand.

  • Spaces in command line arguments for sudo -s and sudo -i are now escaped with a backslash when checking the security policy.


Sudo 1.8.1p2

  • Two-character CIDR-style IPv4 netmasks are now matched correctly in the sudoers file.

  • A build error with MIT Kerberos V has been resolved.

  • A crash on HP-UX in the sudoers plugin when wildcards are present in the sudoers file has been resolved.

  • Sudo now works correctly on Tru64 Unix again.


Sudo 1.8.1p1

  • Fixed a problem on AIX where sudo was unable to set the final uid if the PAM module modified the effective uid.

  • A non-existent includedir is now treated the same as an empty directory and not reported as an error.

  • Removed extraneous parens in LDAP filter when sudoers_search_filter is enabled that can cause an LDAP search error.

  • Fixed a make -j problem for make install


Sudo 1.8.1

  • A new LDAP setting, sudoers_search_filter, has been added to ldap.conf. This setting can be used to restrict the set of records returned by the LDAP query. Based on changes from Matthew Thomas.

  • White space is now permitted within a User_List when used in conjunction with a per-user Defaults definition.

  • A group ID (%#gid) may now be specified in a User_List or Runas_List. Likewise, for non-Unix groups the syntax is %:#gid.

  • Support for double-quoted words in the sudoers file has been fixed. The change in 1.7.5 for escaping the double quote character caused the double quoting to only be available at the beginning of an entry.

  • The fix for resuming a suspended shell in 1.7.5 caused problems with resuming non-shells on Linux. Sudo will now save the process group ID of the program it is running on suspend and restore it when resuming, which fixes both problems.

  • A bug that could result in corrupted output in sudo -l has been fixed.

  • Sudo will now create an entry in the utmp (or utmpx) file when allocating a pseudo-tty (e.g. when logging I/O). The set_utmp and utmp_runas sudoers file options can be used to control this. Other policy plugins may use the set_utmp and utmp_user entries in the command_info list.

  • The sudoers policy now stores the TSID field in the logs even when the iolog_file sudoers option is defined to a value other than %{sessid}. Previously, the TSID field was only included in the log file when the iolog_file option was set to its default value.

  • The sudoreplay utility now supports arbitrary session IDs. Previously, it would only work with the base-36 session IDs that the sudoers plugin uses by default.

  • Sudo now passes “run_shell=true” to the policy plugin in the settings list when sudo’s -s command line option is specified. The sudoers policy plugin uses this to implement the set_home sudoers option which was missing from sudo 1.8.0.

  • The noexec functionality has been moved out of the sudoers policy plugin and into the sudo front-end, which matches the behavior documented in the plugin writer’s guide. As a result, the path to the noexec file is now specified in the sudo.conf file instead of the sudoers file.

  • On Solaris 10, the PRIV_PROC_EXEC privilege is now used to implement the noexec feature. Previously, this was implemented via the LD_PRELOAD environment variable.

  • The exit values for sudo -l, sudo -v and sudo -l command have been fixed in the sudoers policy plugin.

  • The sudoers policy plugin now passes the login class, if any, back to the sudo front-end.

  • The sudoers policy plugin was not being linked with requisite libraries in certain configurations.

  • Sudo now parses command line arguments before loading any plugins. This allows sudo -V or sudo -h to work even if there is a problem with sudo.conf

  • Plugins are now linked with the static version of libgcc to allow the plugin to run on a system where no shared libgcc is installed, or where it is installed in a different location.


Sudo 1.8.0

  • Sudo has been refactored to use a modular framework that can support third-party policy and I/O logging plugins. The default plugin is “sudoers” which provides the traditional sudo functionality. See the sudo_plugin manual for details on the plugin API and the sample in the plugins directory for a simple example.

Sudo 1.7.10p9

  • The TZ environment variable is now checked for safety instead of simply being copied to the environment of the command. This fixes a potential security issue.

  • Sudo now only builds Position Independent Executables (PIE) by default on Linux systems and verifies that a trivial test program builds and runs.

  • On Solaris 11.1 and higher, sudo binaries will now have the ASLR tag enabled if supported by the linker.


Sudo 1.7.10p8

  • Sudo’s exit code now indicates a failure if the user does not successfully authenticate.

  • On HP-UX systems, sudo will now use the pstat() function to determine the tty instead of ttyname().

  • Fixed compilation when --without-iologdir configure option is specified.

  • On systems with BSD login classes, if the user specified a group (not a user) to run the command as, it was possible to specify a different login class even when the command was not run as the super user.

  • The closefrom() emulation on Mac OS X now uses /dev/fd if possible. It also now sets the close on exec flag instead of actually closing the descriptors to avoid a crash in libdispatch.

  • The sudoers plugin will now ignore invalid domain names when checking netgroup membership. Most Linux systems use the string “(none)” for the NIS-style domain name instead of an empty string.

  • Fixed the logic when checking environment variables on the command line against the env_check and env_delete blacklists. This is only a problem when env_reset is disabled in sudoers. This fixes a potential security issue that may allow a user to run unauthorized commands when the env_reset option is disabled in sudoers.


Sudo 1.7.10p7

  • A time stamp file with the date set to the epoch by sudo -k is now completely ignored regardless of what the local clock is set to. Previously, if the local clock was set to a value between the epoch and the time stamp timeout value, a time stamp reset by sudo -k would be considered current.

    This is a potential security issue.

  • Fixed the sudo exit status when sudo -l command is run. This is a regression introduced in version 1.7.10.


Sudo 1.7.10p6

  • Fixed the restoration of SIGINT, SIGQUIT and SIGTSTP. This is a regression introduced in version 1.7.10p4.

  • The tty-specific time stamp file now includes the session ID of the sudo process that created it. If a process with the same tty but a different session ID runs sudo, the user will now be prompted for a password (assuming authentication is required for the command).

    This is a potential security issue.


Sudo 1.7.10p5

  • On systems where the controlling tty can be determined via /proc or sysctl(), sudo will no longer fall back to using ttyname() if the process has no controlling tty. This prevents sudo from using a non-controlling tty for logging and time stamp purposes.

    This is a potential security issue.


Sudo 1.7.10p4

  • Avoid building PIE binaries on FreeBSD/ia64 as they don’t run properly.

  • Fixed a crash in visudo strict mode when an unknown Defaults setting is encountered.

  • Do not inform the user that the command was not permitted by the policy if they do not successfully authenticate. This is a regression introduced in sudo 1.8.6.

  • Allow sudo to be build with sss support without also including ldap support.

  • Fix running commands that need the terminal in the background when I/O logging is enabled. E.g. sudo vi &. When the command is foregrounded, it will now resume properly.


Sudo 1.7.10p3

  • Fixed post-processing of the man pages on systems with legacy versions of sed.

  • Fixed sudoreplay -l on Linux systems with file systems that set DT_UNKNOWN in the d_type field of struct dirent.


Sudo 1.7.10p2

  • Fixed suspending a command after it has already been resumed once when I/O logging (or use_pty) is not enabled. This was a regression introduced in version 1.7.10.

Sudo 1.7.10p1

  • Fixed the setting of LOGNAME, USER and USERNAME variables in the command’s environment when env_reset is enabled (the default). This was a regression introduced in version 1.7.10.

  • Sudo now honors “SUCCESS=return” in /etc/nsswitch.conf.


Sudo 1.7.10

  • Sudo is now built with the -fstack-protector flag if the the compiler supports it. Also, the -zrelro linker flag is used if supported. The --disable-hardening configure option can be used to build sudo without stack smashing protection.

  • Sudo is now built as a Position Independent Executable (PIE) if supported by the compiler and linker.

  • If the user is a member of the exempt group in sudoers, they will no longer be prompted for a password even if the -k flag is specified with the command. This makes sudo -k command consistent with the behavior one would get if the user ran sudo -k immediately before running the command.

  • The sudoers file may now be a symbolic link. Previously, sudo would refuse to read sudoers unless it was a regular file.

  • The user/group/mode checks on sudoers files have been relaxed. As long as the file is owned by the sudoers uid, not world-writable and not writable by a group other than the sudoers gid, the file is considered OK. Note that visudo will still set the mode to the value specified at configure time.

  • /etc/environment is no longer read directly on Linux systems when PAM is used. Sudo now merges the PAM environment into the user’s environment which is typically set by the pam_env module.

  • The initial environment created when env_reset is in effect now includes the contents of /etc/environment on AIX systems and the setenv and path entries from /etc/login.conf on BSD systems.

  • On systems with an SVR4-style /proc file system, the /proc/pid/psinfo file is now uses to determine the controlling terminal, if possible. This allows tty-based tickets to work properly even when, e.g. standard input, output and error are redirected to /dev/null.

  • The output of sudoreplay -l is now sorted by file name (or sequence number). Previously, entries were displayed in the order in which they were found on the file system.

  • The sudoreplay command can now properly replay sessions where no tty was present.

  • Sudo now behaves properly when I/O logging is enabled and the controlling terminal is revoked (e.g. the running sshd is killed). Previously, sudo may have exited without calling the I/O plugin’s close function which can lead to an incomplete I/O log.

  • Sudo can now detect when a user has logged out and back in again on Solaris 11, just like it can on Solaris 10.

  • The built-in zlib included with Sudo has been upgraded to version 1.2.6.

  • Setting the SSL parameter to start_tls in ldap.conf now works properly when using Mozilla-based SDKs that support the ldap_start_tls_s() function.

  • The TLS_CHECKPEER parameter in ldap.conf now works when the Mozilla NSS crypto backend is used with OpenLDAP.

  • Improved support for the Tivoli Directory Server LDAP client libraries. This includes support for using LDAP over SSL (ldaps) as well as support for the BIND_TIMELIMIT, TLS_KEY and TLS_CIPHERS ldap.conf options. A new ldap.conf option, TLS_KEYPW can be used to specify a password to decrypt the key database.

  • Fixed a crash introduced in version 1.7.7 when sudo -s is specified with a command.

  • If a user fails to authenticate and the command would be rejected by sudoers, it is now logged with command not allowed instead of N incorrect password attempts. Likewise, the mail_no_perms sudoers option now takes precedence over mail_badpass

  • The sudo manuals are now formatted using the mdoc macros. Versions using the legacy man macros are provided for systems that lack mdoc.

  • Fixed a problem with the reboot and shutdown commands on some systems (such as HP-UX and BSD). On these systems, reboot sends all processes (except itself) SIGTERM. When sudo received SIGTERM, it would relay it to the reboot process, thus killing reboot before it had a chance to actually reboot the system.

  • Visudo will now warn about unknown Defaults entries that are per-host, per-user, per-runas or per-command.

  • When constructing a time filter for use with LDAP sudoNotBefore and sudoNotAfter attributes, the current time now includes tenths of a second. This fixes a problem with timed entries on Active Directory.

  • Fixed a race condition that could cause sudo to receive SIGTTOU (and stop) when resuming a shell that was run via sudo when I/O logging (and use_pty) is not enabled.

  • Sending SIGTSTP directly to the sudo process will now suspend the running command when I/O logging (and use_pty) is not enabled.


Sudo 1.7.9p1

  • Fixed a potential security issue in the matching of hosts against an IPv4 network specified in sudoers. The flaw may allow a user who is authorized to run commands on hosts belonging to one IPv4 network to run commands on a different host.

Sudo 1.7.9

  • Fixed a false positive in visudo strict mode when aliases are in use.

  • The line on which a syntax error is reported in the sudoers file is now more accurate. Previously it was often off by a line.

  • The #include and #includedir directives in sudoers now support relative paths. If the path is not fully qualified it is expected to be located in the same directory of the sudoers file that is including it.

  • visudo will now fix the mode on the sudoers file even if no changes are made unless the -f option is specified.

  • The use_loginclass sudoers option works properly again.

  • For LDAP-based sudoers, values in the search expression are now escaped as per RFC 4515.

  • Fixed a race condition when I/O logging is not enabled that could result in tty-generated signals (e.g. control-C) being received by the command twice.

  • If none of the standard input, output or error are connected to a tty device, sudo will now check its parent’s standard input, output or error for the tty name on systems with /proc and BSD systems that support the KERN_PROC_PID sysctl. This allows tty-based tickets to work properly even when, e.g. standard input, output and error are redirected to /dev/null.

  • Fixed a bug where a pattern like /usr/* included /usr/bin/ in the results, which would be incorrectly be interpreted as if the sudoers file had specified a directory.

  • visudo -c will now list any include files that were checked in addition to the main sudoers file when everything parses OK.

  • Users that only have read-only access to the sudoers file may now run visudo -c. Previously, write permissions were required even though no writing is down in check-only mode.


Sudo 1.7.8p2

  • Fixed a crash in the monitor process on Solaris when NOPASSWD was specified or when authentication was disabled.

Sudo 1.7.8p1

  • Fixed matching of a Runas_Alias in the group section of a Runas_Spec.

Sudo 1.7.8

  • Sudo will now use PAM by default on AIX 6 and higher.

  • Added --enable-werror configure option for gcc’s -Werror flag.

  • Visudo no longer assumes all editors support the +linenumber command line argument. It now uses a whitelist of editors known to support the option.

  • Fixed matching of network addresses when a netmask is specified but the address is not the first one in the CIDR block.

  • The configure script now check whether or not errno.h declares the errno variable. Previously, sudo would always declare errno itself for older systems that don’t declare it in errno.h.

  • The NOPASSWD tag is now honored for denied commands too, which matches historic sudo behavior (prior to sudo 1.7.0).

  • Sudo now honors the DEREF setting in ldap.conf which controls how alias dereferencing is done during an LDAP search.

  • Using the -n option may in conjunction with the -v or -l option no longer results in a usage error.

  • The LOGNAME, USER and USERNAME environment variables are preserved correctly again in sudoedit mode.


Sudo 1.7.7

  • I/O logging is now supported for commands run in background mode (using sudo’s -b flag).

  • Group ownership of the sudoers file is now only enforced when the file mode on sudoers allows group readability or writability.

  • Visudo now checks the contents of an alias and warns about cycles when the alias is expanded.

  • If the user specifies a group via sudo’s -g option that matches the target user’s group in the password database, it is now allowed even if no groups are present in the Runas_Spec.

  • sudo -i command now works correctly with the bash version 2.0 and higher. Previously, the .bash_profile would not be sourced prior to running the command unless bash was built with NON_INTERACTIVE_LOGIN_SHELLS defined.

  • Multi-factor authentication is now supported on AIX.

  • Added support for non-RFC 4517 compliant LDAP servers that require that seconds be present in a timestamp, such as Tivoli Directory Server.

  • If the group vector is to be preserved, the PATH search for the command is now done with the user’s original group vector.

  • For LDAP-based sudoers, the runas_default sudoOption now works properly in a sudoRole that contains a sudoCommand.

  • Spaces in command line arguments for sudo -s and sudo -i are now escaped with a backslash when checking the sudoers file.


Sudo 1.7.6p2

  • Two-character CIDR-style IPv4 netmasks are now matched correctly in the sudoers file.

  • A build error with MIT Kerberos V has been resolved.


Sudo 1.7.6p1

  • A non-existent includedir is now treated the same as an empty directory and not reported as an error.

  • Removed extraneous parens in LDAP filter when sudoers_search_filter is enabled that can cause an LDAP search error.


Sudo 1.7.6

  • A new LDAP setting, sudoers_search_filter, has been added to ldap.conf. This setting can be used to restrict the set of records returned by the LDAP query. Based on changes from Matthew Thomas.

  • White space is now permitted within a User_List when used in conjunction with a per-user Defaults definition.

  • A group ID (%#gid) may now be specified in a User_List or Runas_List. Likewise, for non-Unix groups the syntax is %:#gid.

  • Support for double-quoted words in the sudoers file has been fixed. The change in 1.7.5 for escaping the double quote character caused the double quoting to only be available at the beginning of an entry.

  • The fix for resuming a suspended shell in 1.7.5 caused problems with resuming non-shells on Linux. Sudo will now save the process group ID of the program it is running on suspend and restore it when resuming, which fixes both problems.

  • A bug that could result in corrupted output in sudo -l has been fixed.


Sudo 1.7.5

  • When using visudo in check mode, a file named “-” may be used to check sudoers data on the standard input.

  • Sudo now only fetches shadow password entries when using the password database directly for authentication.

  • Password and group entries are now cached using the same key that was used to look them up. This fixes a problem when looking up entries by name if the name in the retrieved entry does not match the name used to look it up. This may happen on some systems that do case insensitive lookups or that truncate long names.

  • GCC will no longer display warnings on glibc systems that use the warn_unused_result attribute for write(2) and other system calls.

  • If a PAM account management module denies access, sudo now prints a more useful error message and stops trying to validate the user.

  • Fixed a potential hang on idle systems when the sudo-run process exits immediately.

  • Sudo now includes a copy of zlib that will be used on systems that do not have zlib installed.

  • The --with-umask-override configure flag has been added to enable the umask_override sudoers Defaults option at build time.

  • Sudo now unblocks all signals on startup to avoid problems caused by the parent process changing the default signal mask.

  • LDAP Sudoers entries may now specify a time period for which the entry is valid. This requires an updated sudoers schema that includes the sudoNotBefore and sudoNotAfter attributes. Support for timed entries must be explicitly enabled in the ldap.conf file. Based on changes from Andreas Mueller.

  • LDAP Sudoers entries may now specify a sudoOrder attribute that determines the order in which matching entries are applied. The last matching entry is used, just like file-based sudoers. This requires an updated sudoers schema that includes the sudoOrder attribute. Based on changes from Andreas Mueller.

  • When run as sudoedit, or when given the -e flag, sudo now treats command line arguments as pathnames. This means that slashes in the sudoers file entry must explicitly match slashes in the command line arguments. As a result, and entry such as: user ALL = sudoedit /etc/* will allow editing of /etc/motd but not /etc/security/default.

  • NETWORK_TIMEOUT is now an alias for BIND_TIMELIMIT in ldap.conf for compatibility with OpenLDAP configuration files.

  • The LDAP API TIMEOUT parameter is now honored in ldap.conf.

  • The I/O log directory may now be specified in the sudoers file.

  • Sudo will no longer refuse to run if the sudoers file is writable by root.

  • Sudo now performs command line escaping for sudo -s and sudo -i after validating the command so the sudoers entries do not need to include the backslashes.

  • Logging and email sending are now done in the locale specified by the sudoers_locale setting (“C” by default). Email send by sudo now includes MIME headers when “sudoers_locale” is not “C”.

  • The configure script has a new option, --disable-env-reset, to allow one to change the default for the sudoers Default setting env_reset at compile time.

  • When logging sudo -l command, sudo will now prepend “list " to the command in the log line to distinguish between an actual command invocation in the logs.

  • Double-quoted group and user names may now include escaped double quotes as part of the name. Previously this was a parse error.

  • Sudo once again restores the state of the signal handlers it modifies before executing the command. This allows sudo to be used with the nohup command.

  • Resuming a suspended shell now works properly when I/O logging is not enabled (the I/O logging case was already correct).


Sudo 1.7.4p6

  • A bug has been fixed in the I/O logging support that could cause visual artifacts in full-screen programs such as text editors,.

Sudo 1.7.4p5

  • A bug has been fixed that would allow a command to be run without the user entering a password when sudo’s -g flag is used without the -u flag.

  • If user has no supplementary groups, sudo will now fall back on checking the group file explicitly, which restores historic sudo behavior.

  • A crash has been fixed when sudo’s -g flag is used without the -u flag and the sudoers file contains an entry with no runas user or group listed.

  • A crash has been fixed when the Solaris project support is enabled and sudo’s -g flag is used without the -u flag.

  • Sudo no longer exits with an error when support for auditing is compiled in but auditing is not enabled.

  • Fixed a bug introduced in sudo 1.7.3 where the ticket file was not being honored when the targetpw sudoers Defaults option was enabled.

  • The LOG_INPUT and LOG_OUTPUT tags in sudoers are now parsed correctly.

  • A crash has been fixed in sudo -l when sudo is built with auditing support and the user is not allowed to run any commands on the host.


Sudo 1.7.4p4

  • A potential security issue has been fixed with respect to the handling of sudo’s -g command line option when -u is also specified. The flaw may allow an attacker to run commands as a user that is not authorized by the sudoers file.

  • A bug has been fixed where sudo -l output was incomplete if multiple sudoers sources were defined in nsswitch.conf and there was an error querying one of the sources.

  • The log_input, log_output, and use_pty sudoers options now work correctly on AIX. Previously, sudo would hang if they were enabled.

  • Fixed make install when sudo is built in a directory other than the directory that holds the sources.

  • The runas_default sudoers setting now works properly in a per-command Defaults line.

  • Suspending and resuming the bash shell when PAM is in use now works properly. The SIGCONT signal was not being propagated to the child process.


Sudo 1.7.4p3

  • A bug has been fixed where duplicate HOME environment variables could be set when the env_reset setting was disabled and the always_set_home setting was enabled in sudoers.

  • The value of sysconfdir is now substituted into the path to the sudoers.d directory in the installed sudoers file.

  • Fixed compilation problems on Irix and other platforms.

  • If multiple PAM “auth” actions are specified and the user enters ^C at the password prompt, sudo will now abort any subsequent “auth” actions. Previously it was necessary to enter ^C once for each “auth” action.


Sudo 1.7.4p2

  • Fixed a bug where sudo could spin in a cpu loop waiting for the child process.

  • Packaging fixes for sudo.pp to better handle patchlevels.


Sudo 1.7.4p1

  • Fix a bug introduced in sudo 1.7.3 that prevented the -k and -K options from functioning when the tty_tickets sudoers option was enabled.

  • Sudo no longer prints a warning when the -k or -K options are specified and the ticket file does not exist.

  • Changes to the configure script to enable cross-compilation of Sudo.


Sudo 1.7.4

  • Sudoedit will now preserve the file extension in the name of the temporary file being edited. The extension is used by some editors (such as emacs) to choose the editing mode.

  • Time stamp files have moved from /var/run/sudo to either /var/db/sudo, /var/lib/sudo or /var/adm/sudo. The directories are checked for existence in that order. This prevents users from receiving the sudo lecture every time the system reboots. Time stamp files older than the boot time are ignored on systems where it is possible to determine this.

  • Ancillary documentation (README files, LICENSE, etc) is now installed in a sudo documentation directory.

  • Sudo now recognizes tls_cacert as an alias for tls_cacertfile in ldap.conf.

  • Defaults settings that are tied to a user, host or command may now include the negation operator. For example:

    Defaults:!millert lecture
    

    will match any user but millert.

  • The default PATH environment variable, used when no PATH variable exists, now includes /usr/sbin and /sbin.

  • Sudo now uses polypkg for cross-platform packing.

  • On Linux, sudo will now restore the nproc resource limit before executing a command, unless the limit appears to have been modified by pam_limits. This avoids a problem with bash scripts that open more than 32 descriptors on SuSE Linux, where sysconf(_SC_CHILD_MAX) will return -1 when RLIMIT_NPROC is set to RLIMIT_UNLIMITED (-1).

  • Visudo will now treat an unrecognized Defaults entry as a parse error (sudo will warn but still run).

  • The HOME and MAIL environment variables are now reset based on the target user’s password database entry when the env_reset sudoers option is enabled (which is the case in the default configuration). Users wishing to preserve the original values should use a sudoers entry like:

    Defaults env_keep += HOME
    

    to preserve the old value of HOME and

    Defaults env_keep += MAIL
    

    to preserve the old value of MAIL.

  • The tty_tickets option is now on by default.

  • Fixed a problem in the restoration of the AIX authdb registry setting.

  • If PAM is in use, wait until the process has finished before closing the PAM session.

  • Fixed sudo -i -u user where user has no shell listed in the password database.

  • When logging I/O, sudo now handles pty read/write returning ENXIO, as seen on FreeBSD when the login session has been killed.

  • Sudo now performs I/O logging in the C locale. This avoids locale-related issues when parsing floating point numbers in the timing file.

  • Added support for Ubuntu-style admin flag dot files.


Sudo 1.7.3

  • Support for logging a command’s input and output as well as the ability to replay sessions. For more information, see the documentation for the log_input and log_output Defaults options in the sudoers manual. Also see the sudoreplay manual for information on replaying I/O log sessions.

  • The use_pty sudoers option can be used to force a command to be run in a pseudo-pty, even when I/O logging is not enabled.

  • On some systems, sudo can now detect when a user has logged out and back in again when tty-based time stamps are in use. Supported systems include Solaris systems with the devices file system, Mac OS X, and Linux systems with the devpts filesystem (pseudo-ttys only).

  • On AIX systems, the registry setting in /etc/security/user is now taken into account when looking up users and groups. Sudo now applies the correct the user and group ids when running a command as a user whose account details come from a different source (e.g. LDAP or DCE vs. local files).

  • Support for multiple sudoers_base and uri entries in ldap.conf. When multiple entries are listed, sudo will try each one in the order in which they are specified.

  • Sudo’s SELinux support should now function correctly when running commands as a non-root user and when one of stdin, stdout or stderr is not a terminal.

  • Sudo will now use the Linux audit system with configure with the --with-linux-audit flag.

  • Sudo now uses mbr_check_membership() on systems that support it to determine group membership. Currently, only Darwin (Mac OS X) supports this.

  • When the tty_tickets sudoers option is enabled but there is no terminal device, sudo will no longer use or create a tty-based ticket file. Previously, sudo would use a tty name of “unknown”. As a consequence, if a user has no terminal device, sudo will now always prompt for a password.

  • The passwd_timeout and timestamp_timeout options may now be specified as floating point numbers for more granular timeout values.

  • Negating the fqdn option in sudoers now works correctly when sudo is configured with the --with-fqdn option. In previous versions of sudo the fqdn was set before sudoers was parsed.


Sudo 1.7.2p8

  • Fixed a crash on AIX when LDAP support is in use.

  • Fixed problems with the QAS non-Unix group support.


Sudo 1.7.2p7

  • Fix detection of newer versions of OpenPAM.

  • Sync non-Unix group support with Quest sudo git repo.

  • Configure fixes: HP-UX ld uses +b instead of -R or -rpath; fix typo in --with-vasgroups check; link with -ldl for vasgroups; add missing template for ENV_DEBUG.

  • Fix typos in README.LDAP.

  • Use the value of SHELL from configure in the Makefile.

  • Handle duplicate variables in the environment. For unsetenv(), keep looking even after remove the first instance. For sudo_putenv(), check for and remove dupes after we replace an existing value.

  • Fix a crash in visudo when checking a sudoers file that has aliases that reference themselves.

  • Fix a crash in visudo when checking a sudoers file in strict mode when alias errors are present.


Sudo 1.7.2p6

  • When doing a glob match, short circuit if gl_pathc is 0.

  • Fix a bug introduced with def_closefrom. The value of def_closefrom already includes the +1.

  • Added a note about the security implications of the fast_glob sudoers option.

  • Qualify the command even if it is in the current working directory, e.g. “./foo” instead of just returning “foo”. This removes an ambiguity between real commands and possible pseudo-commands in command matching.

  • Fix installation of sudoers.ldap in make install when --with-ldap was specified without a directory.


Sudo 1.7.2p5

  • Fix size arg when realloc()ing include stack.

  • Avoid a duplicate fclose() of the sudoers file.


Sudo 1.7.2p4

  • Fix a bug that could allow users with permission to run sudoedit to run arbitrary commands.

Sudo 1.7.2p3

  • Fix printing of entries with multiple host entries on a single line.

  • Fix use after free when sending error messages via email.

  • Use setrlimit64(), if available, instead of setrlimit() when setting AIX resource limits since rlim_t is 32bits.


Sudo 1.7.2p2

  • Fixed a a bug where the negation operator in a Cmnd_List was not being honored.

  • No longer produce a parse error when #includedir references a directory that contains no valid filenames.

  • The sudo.man.pl and sudoers.man.pl files are now included in the distribution for people who wish to regenerate the man pages.

  • Fixed the emulation of krb5_get_init_creds_opt_alloc() for MIT kerberos.

  • When authenticating via PAM, set PAM_RUSER and PAM_RHOST early so they can be used during authentication.


Sudo 1.7.2p1

  • Fixed the expansion of the %h escape in #include file names introduced in sudo 1.7.1.

Sudo 1.7.2

  • A new #includedir directive is available in sudoers. This can be used to implement an /etc/sudo.d directory. Files in an includedir are not edited by visudo unless they contain a syntax error.

  • The -g option did not work properly when only setting the group (and not the user). Also, in -l mode the wrong user was displayed for sudoers entries where only the group was allowed to be set.

  • Fixed a problem with the alias checking in visudo which could prevent visudo from exiting.

  • Sudo will now correctly parse the shell-style /etc/environment file format used by pam_env on Linux.

  • When doing password and group database lookups, sudo will only cache an entry by name or by id, depending on how the entry was looked up. Previously, sudo would cache by both name and id from a single lookup, but this breaks sites that have multiple password or group database names that map to the same uid or gid.

  • User and group names in sudoers may now be enclosed in double quotes to avoid having to escape special characters.

  • BSM audit fixes when changing to a non-root uid.

  • Experimental non-Unix group support. Currently only works with Quest Authorization Services and allows Active Directory groups fixes for Minix-3.

  • For Netscape/Mozilla-derived LDAP SDKs the certificate and key paths may be specified as a directory or a file. However, version 5.0 of the SDK only appears to support using a directory (despite documentation to the contrary). If SSL client initialization fails and the certificate or key paths look like they could be default file name, strip off the last path element and try again.

  • A setenv() compatibility fix for Linux systems, where a NULL value is treated the same as an empty string and the variable name is checked against the NULL pointer.


Sudo 1.7.1

  • Fixed a bug in the version of glob() supplied with sudo that affected character classes and ranges.

  • Fixed a NULL pointer dereference when the sudoers file mode or owner was incorrect.

  • Fixed a NULL pointer dereference when a PAM module called the sudo conversation function during a phase other than authentication.

  • Fixed an LDAP compatibility problem with the AIX LDAP libraries.

  • A new Defaults option pwfeedback will cause sudo to provide visual feedback when the user is entering a password.

  • A new Defaults option fast_glob will cause sudo to use the fnmatch() function for file name globbing instead of glob(). When this option is enabled, sudo will not check the file system when expanding wildcards. This is faster but a side effect is that relative paths with wildcard will no longer work.

  • New BSM audit support for systems that support it such as FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

  • The file name specified with the #include directive may now include a %h escape which is expanded to the short form of hostname.

  • The -k flag may now be specified along with a command, causing the user’s timestamp file to be ignored.

  • New support for Tivoli-based LDAP START_TLS, present in AIX.

  • New support for /etc/netsvc.conf on AIX.

  • The unused alias checks in visudo now handle the case of an alias referring to another alias.

  • A new Defaults option umask_override will cause sudo to set the umask specified in sudoers even if it is more permissive than the invoking user’s umask.


Sudo 1.7.0

  • Rewritten parser that converts sudoers into a set of data structures. This eliminates a number of ordering issues and makes it possible to apply sudoers Defaults entries before searching for the command. It also adds support for per-command Defaults specifications.

  • Sudoers now supports a #include facility to allow the inclusion of other sudoers-format files.

  • Sudo’s -l (list) flag has been enhanced:

    • applicable Defaults options are now listed
    • a command argument can be specified for testing whether a user may run a specific command.
    • a new -U flag can be used in conjunction with sudo -l to allow root (or a user with sudo ALL) to list another user’s privileges.
  • A new -g flag has been added to allow the user to specify a primary group to run the command as. The sudoers syntax has been extended to include a group section in the Runas specification.

  • A uid may now be used anywhere a username is valid.

  • The secure_path run-time Defaults option has been restored.

  • Password and group data is now cached for fast lookups.

  • The file descriptor at which sudo starts closing all open files is now configurable via sudoers and, optionally, the command line.

  • visudo will now warn about aliases that are defined but not used.

  • The -i and -s command line flags now take an optional command to be run via the shell. Previously, the argument was passed to the shell as a script to run.

  • Improved LDAP support. SASL authentication may now be used in conjunction when connecting to an LDAP server. The krb5_ccname parameter in ldap.conf may be used to enable Kerberos.

  • Support for /etc/nsswitch.conf. LDAP users may now use nsswitch.conf to specify the sudoers order. E.g.:

    sudoers: ldap files
    

    to check LDAP, then /etc/sudoers. The default is files, even when LDAP support is compiled in. This differs from sudo 1.6 where LDAP was always consulted first.

  • Support for /etc/environment on AIX and Linux. If sudo is run with the -i flag, the contents of /etc/environment are used to populate the new environment that is passed to the command being run.

  • Sudo now ignores user .ldaprc files as well as system LDAP defaults. All LDAP configuration is now in /etc/ldap.conf (or whichever file was specified by configure’s --with-ldap-conf-file option). If you are using TLS, you may now need to specify:

    tls_checkpeer no
    

    in sudo’s ldap.conf unless ldap.conf references a valid certificate authority file(s).

  • If no terminal is available or if the new -A flag is specified, sudo will use a helper program to read the password if one is configured. Typically, this is a graphical password prompter such as ssh-askpass.

  • A new Defaults option, mailfrom that sets the value of the “From:” field in the warning/error mail. If unspecified, the login name of the invoking user is used.

  • Resource limits are now set to the default value for the user the command is being run as on AIX systems.

  • A new Defaults option, env_file that refers to a file containing environment variables to be set in the command being run.

  • A new -n flag is available which may be used to indicate that sudo should not prompt the user for a password and, instead, exit with an error if authentication is required.

  • A new Defaults option, sudoers_locale that can be used to set the locale to be used when parsing the sudoers file.

  • sudoedit now checks the EDITOR and VISUAL environment variables to make sure sudoedit is not re-invoking itself (or sudo). This allows one to set EDITOR to sudoedit without getting into an infinite loop for programs that need to invoke an editor such as crontab(1). Also added SUDO_EDITOR environment variable which is used by sudoedit in preference to EDITOR/VISUAL.

  • The versions of glob(3) and fnmatch(3) bundled with sudo now support POSIX character classes.

  • If sudo needs to prompt for a password and it is unable to disable echo (and no askpass program is defined), it will refuse to run unless the visiblepw Defaults option has been specified.

  • Prior to version 1.7.0, hitting enter/return at the Password: prompt would exit sudo. In sudo 1.7.0 and beyond, this is treated as an empty password. To exit sudo, the user must now press ^C or ^D at the prompt.