Sudo Stable Release

Current Stable Release

The current stable release of sudo is 1.8.3p2.

For full details see the ChangeLog file or view the commit logs via mercurial.

Major changes between version 1.8.3p2 and 1.8.3p1:

  • 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.

Major changes between version 1.8.3p1 and 1.8.3:

  • 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.

Major changes between version 1.8.3 and 1.8.2:

  • 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.

Major changes between version 1.8.2 and 1.8.1p2:

  • 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 Ukranian.

  • 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 specifes 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.

Major changes between version 1.8.1p2 and 1.8.1p1:

  • 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.

Major changes between version 1.8.1p1 and 1.8.1:

  • 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

Major changes between version 1.8.1 and 1.8.0:

  • 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.

Major changes between version 1.8.0 and 1.7.5:

  • 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.