CVE-2019-19232
sudo: attacker with access to a Runas ALL sudoer account can impersonate a nonexistent user
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.0
Review impact separately from score.
Published · December 19, 2019
Updated · November 22, 2025
Description
It was found that sudo always allowed commands to be run with unknown user or group ids if the sudo configuration allowed it for example via the "ALL" alias. This could allow sudo to impersonate non-existent account and depending on how applications are configured, could lead to certain restriction bypass. This is now explicitly disabled. A new setting called "allow_unknown_runas_id" was introduced in order to enable this.
Statement
A new setting variable called "allow_unknown_runas_id" was introduced which would explicitly allow sudo to run applications with unknown user or group ids (Provided sudo was configured that way, for example via the runas parameter etc).
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
This flaw only affects specific, non-default configurations of sudo, in which sudoers configuration entry allows a user to run a command as any user except root. Any other configuration of sudo is not affected by this flaw.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.0 · 7.5CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-284 · Improper Access Control