In Sudo before 1.9.12p2, the sudoedit (aka -e) feature mishandles extra arguments passed in the user-provided environment variables (SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL, and EDITOR), allowing a local attacker to append arbitrary entries to the list of files to process. This can lead to privilege escalation.
Affected versions are 1.8.0 through 1.9.12.p1
The problem exists because a user-specified editor may contain a "--" argument that defeats a protection mechanism, e.g., an EDITOR='vim -- /path/to/extra/file' value.
Please note that for the exploitation to work it requires that the sudoers file be configured to allow the malicious user to run sudoedit. If no users have been granted access to sudoedit there is no impact.
Sources:
https://www.pro-linux.de/sicherheit/2/71712/Überschreiben-von-dateien-in-sudo.html
https://www.csa.gov.sg/singcert/Alerts/al-2023-009
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-22809
Affected versions are 1.8.0 through 1.9.12.p1
The problem exists because a user-specified editor may contain a "--" argument that defeats a protection mechanism, e.g., an EDITOR='vim -- /path/to/extra/file' value.
Please note that for the exploitation to work it requires that the sudoers file be configured to allow the malicious user to run sudoedit. If no users have been granted access to sudoedit there is no impact.
Sources:
https://www.pro-linux.de/sicherheit/2/71712/Überschreiben-von-dateien-in-sudo.html
https://www.csa.gov.sg/singcert/Alerts/al-2023-009
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-22809