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Ubuntu 4.10 : sudo vulnerability (USN-28-1)

high Nessus Plugin ID 20643

Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing a security-related patch.

Description

Liam Helmer discovered an input validation flaw in sudo. When the standard shell 'bash' starts up, it searches the environment for variables with a value beginning with '()'. For each of these variables a function with the same name is created, with the function body filled in from the environment variable's value.

A malicious user with sudo access to a shell script that uses bash can use this feature to substitute arbitrary commands for any non-fully-qualified programs called from the script. Therefore this flaw can lead to privilege escalation.

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Solution

Update the affected sudo package.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 20643

File Name: ubuntu_USN-28-1.nasl

Version: 1.14

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 1/15/2006

Updated: 1/19/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:sudo, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:4.10

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/Debian/dpkg-l, Host/Ubuntu, Host/Ubuntu/release

Patch Publication Date: 11/17/2004

Reference Information

USN: 28-1