Bug 18825

Summary:	sudo doesn't clear LANG and LC_ALL
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Manfred Spraul <manfred>
Component:	sudo	Assignee:	Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7.0	Keywords:	Security
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-10-10 21:39:37 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Manfred Spraul 2000-10-10 15:39:50 UTC

The subject explains the problem:
* sudo can be used to execute programs as root in a controlled fashion.
* sudo tries to remove dangerous environment variables such as IFS or LD_?
* neither LANG nor LC_ALL are cleared, but they are dangerous.

Could someone check if this is a bug?

Thanks

Comment 1 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-10-10 20:46:20 UTC

Why do you think LANG or LC_ALL are dangerous? The glibc bug that let users
specify their own locale files translating format strings and stuff has been
fixed.

Comment 2 Manfred Spraul 2000-10-10 21:39:31 UTC

sudo itself is safe, but sudo will launch additional programs that aren't setuid
root.

And in your recent security advisory for usermode-1.36 I read:

> The usermode package contains a binary (/usr/bin/userhelper),
> which is used to control access to programs which are to be
> executed as root.  Because programs invoked by userhelper
> are not actually running setuid-root, security measures built
> into recent versions of glibc are not active.

s/userhelper/sudo/g

sudo is doing exactly what userhelper is doing.

Comment 3 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-10-11 10:14:47 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 18878 ***