Description of problem: When I use sudo to run a priveleged command in gnome-terminal, I wish to close the terminal so sudo cannot be used again. However if a new gnome-terminal is started soon after and a sudo command is run, sudo does not ask for a password. I have noticed that this has been a problem for a quite a few versions of fedora. This seems like a minor security risk as I would expect sudo to work per terminal and so closing a terminal would "forget" that sudo had previously been used. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): sudo-1.6.8p12-4.1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open gnome-terminal and use sudo to execute a command (requiring passwd) 2. Close gnome-terimal. 3. Open new terminal(s) 4. run a new sudo command Actual results: sudo runs without requiring a passwd Expected results: sudo should ask for a password before continuing Additional info:
this seems to be the case with xterm , and so persumably, other apps too.
The password timestamp is not terminal specific and it's valid for all terminals. You can disable this feature by timestamp_timeout=0 option in the /etc/sudoers file. For more details see man sudo and man sudoers.