SUDO Flaw Affects Current Mac OS Users, especially with the recent discovery of a critical flaw CVE-2021-3156 in Linux SUDO (“super user do!). Naming it “Baron Samedit,” it is a flaw in a Unix program that allowing system admins to provide root-level privileges to any users listed in the “sudoers” file.
More disturbing, however, is researchers stumbling across the fact that the Sudo privilege escalation also impacts the latest version of macOS, Big Sur 11.2.
Linux developers have already moved to patch the issue in various Linux distros, including Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, three of the most popular. However, there is currently no fix yet for macOS and no estimate of a release date. Apple proves to be quite responsive in the face of issues like these, so the smart money says it won’t take long.
Security researcher Matthew Hickey put together a simple proof of concept that shows how the exploit works, which is standard practice in situations like these, but it does mean that the clock is ticking. Even if the exploit isn’t being actively in use by hackers before, with a step-by-step blueprint in hand, you could bet that it’s just a matter of time.
Matthew Hickey points out that Mac users cannot take matters of the SUDO Flaw Affects into their own hands and attempt to manually upgrade SUDO because Apple’s System Integrity Protection system prevents this. IBM notes that there is not yet a patch for the AIX Unix distribution, one of the few builds, other than macOS, that protects against this flaw. So if you use either of those, be aware that you face a period of vulnerability and watch for the fix, which should be released soon.
