The security hole in sudo

Re:The security hole in sudo by jiggy2011 on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @11:21AM (#4013475)

This is something that seems to be the case on vi and emacs too, I have never seen a unix program which prompts me for sudo password at the moment that it needs to do a privileged operation rather than requiring running via sudo.

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Re:The security hole in sudo by cscheid on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:58PM (#4013958)

On emacs, you can C-x C-f /sudo://etc/hosts and it'll do what you think that means, including prompting for your password only once in $TIMEOUT. It's the same base mechanism that lets you C-x C-f /user@host:path for remote editing through ssh.

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Re:The security hole in sudo by TheCapn on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @11:29AM (#4013528)

When I vi a read-only file:

     "/etc/mail/aliases" [Read only] 36 lines, 1023 characters

Its simply a matter of remaining keen when doing admin tasks. Sure I have to close/re-open with sudo but its prompting me up front that I won't be able to save it.

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Re:The security hole in sudo by anoother on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:27PM (#4013797)

> Sure I have to close/re-open with sudo but its prompting me up front that I won't be able to save it.

No, you don't, and yes, you will:

  :w !sudo tee %

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Re:The security hole in sudo by FuzzyDunlop on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:15PM (#4013749)

You can do something like this instead (IIRC):

    :w !sudo tee % > /dev/null

It's a bit of a hack, but it works.

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Re:The security hole in sudo by nknight on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @11:26AM (#4013503)

I have, but it was a patched version.

I think there's a sense, which I generally agree with, that random applications asking for your password is something we don't want users to get used to.

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