What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-42465

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2023-12-22 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

Sudo before 1.9.15 might allow row hammer attacks (for authentication bypass or privilege escalation) because application logic sometimes is based on not equaling an error value (instead of equaling a success value), and because the values do not resist flips of a single bit.

Affected products

• sudo: before 1.9.15 — fixed in 1.9.15

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: sudo 1.9.15. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.02545
• https://github.com/sudo-project/sudo/commit/7873f8334c8d31031f8cfa83bd97ac6029309e4f
• https://github.com/sudo-project/sudo/releases/tag/SUDO_1_9_15
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/R4Q23NHCKCLFIHSNY6KJ27GM7FSCEVXM/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/U6XMRUJCPII4MPWG43HTYR76DGLEYEFZ/
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202401-29
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20240208-0002/
• https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/12/21/9
• https://www.sudo.ws/releases/changelog/
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/09/23/2
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/09/24/6
• https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.02545

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