12-Year-Old Sudo Linux Vulnerability Enables Privilege Escalation to Root User
A significant security vulnerability discovered in the widely used Sudo utility has remained hidden for over 12 years, potentially exposing millions of Linux and Unix systems to privilege escalation attacks.
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-32462 allows unauthorized users to gain root access on affected systems by exploiting the Sudo host option functionality.
The Stratascale Cyber Research Unit (CRU) team discovered this critical flaw, which has been present since the implementation of the -h (–host) option in Sudo version 1.8.8, released in September 2013.
The CVE-2025-32462 vulnerability exploits a fundamental flaw in how Sudo processes the -h or –host option when used with commands other than the list operation (-l).
While the documentation explicitly states that the host option should only work “in conjunction with the -l (–list) option,” the vulnerability allows malicious actors to execute privileged commands by specifying remote host rules that bypass local security restrictions.
