HIGH 7.8 Microsoft PoC

CVE-2023-22809

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.

Microsoft Security Update 2023-Jan: 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.

Affected Products

References

Published: 2023-01-10 · Source: Microsoft · Feed updated: 2026-08-04
This high severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 7.8 was published on 2023-01-10 via Microsoft. 🚨 A public proof-of-concept exploit is available on GitHub. EPSS score: 55.4% (top 1% of all CVEs by exploitation probability). Affected: cm1 sudo 1.9.12p2-1 on CBL Mariner 1.0, cbl2 sudo 1.9.12p2-1 on CBL Mariner 2.0.
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