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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2019-19234 json

In Sudo through 1.8.29, the fact that a user has been blocked (e.g., by using the ! character in the shadow file instead of a password hash…

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2019-8860

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.2%
EPSS 3.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Sudo through 1.8.29, the fact that a user has been blocked (e.g., by using the ! character in the shadow file instead of a password hash) is not considered, allowing an attacker (who has access to a Runas ALL sudoer account) to impersonate any blocked user. NOTE: The software maintainer believes that this CVE is not valid. Disabling local password authentication for a user is not the same as disabling all access to that user--the user may still be able to login via other means (ssh key, kerberos, etc). Both the Linux shadow(5) and passwd(1) manuals are clear on this. Indeed it is a valid use case to have local accounts that are _only_ accessible via sudo and that cannot be logged into with a password. Sudo 1.8.30 added an optional setting to check the _shell_ of the target user (not the encrypted password!) against the contents of /etc/shells but that is not the same thing as preventing access to users with an invalid password hash

Patch / fix

  • sudo Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.8.31-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2019-19234

  • sudo Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 1.8.31-1ubuntu1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2019-19234

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • sudo RHEL 8 1.8.29-5.el8

red hat advisories RHSA-2020:1804

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2019-19234 updated cvss 7.5

sudo: by using ! character in the shadow file instead of a password hash can access to a run as all sudoer account

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 sudo Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 sudo Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 sudo
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 8) sudo 1.8.29-5.el8
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2020:1804

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

3.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.