A vulnerability classified as very critical has been found in sudo 1.8.29 (Operating System Utility Software). This affects the function getln of the file tgetpass.c of the component pwfeedback. The manipulation as part of a Long String leads to a out-of-bounds write vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-787. The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

In Sudo through 1.8.29, if pwfeedback is enabled in /etc/sudoers, users can trigger a stack-based buffer overflow in the privileged sudo process. (pwfeedback is a default setting in Linux Mint and elementary OS; however, it is NOT the default for upstream and many other packages, and would exist only if enabled by an administrator.) The attacker needs to deliver a long string to the stdin of getln() in tgetpass.c.

The weakness was disclosed 01/29/2020 as HT21091 as confirmed advisory (Website). The advisory is shared at support.apple.com. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2019-18634 since 10/30/2019. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. A authentication is needed for exploitation. Technical details and a public exploit are known. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 05/16/2025).

A public exploit has been developed by Dylan Katz in Bash and been published 2 weeks after the advisory. The exploit is shared for download at exploit-db.com. It is declared as proof-of-concept. We expect the 0-day to have been worth approximately $25k-$100k. The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 236710 (Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 : 0113: sudo (ALINUX3-SA-2022:0113)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Exploit-DB (48052) and Tenable (236710). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

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Type

• Operating System Utility Software

Name

• sudo

Version

• 1.8.29

License

• open-source

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