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Vulnerability record · CVE-2021-23239 · published 12 January 2021

CVE-2021-23239: Sudo project sudo link following vulnerability

Sudo Project · Sudo

The sudoedit personality of Sudo before 1.9.5 may allow a local unprivileged user to perform arbitrary directory-existence tests by winning a sudo_edit.c race condition in replacing a user-controlled directory by a symlink to an arbitrary path.

2.5 CVSS 3.1 Low EPSS 1.0% · top 36.6% CWE-59 · Link following
2.5CVSS 3.1 base score, v2 1.9
1.0%EPSS exploitation probability, 30 days
NoNot in CISA KEV
6Affected product versions listed by NVD
14References, 2 tagged exploit
17 Jun 2026Last modified by NVD

Description

The sudoedit personality of Sudo before 1.9.5 may allow a local unprivileged user to perform arbitrary directory-existence tests by winning a sudo_edit.c race condition in replacing a user-controlled directory by a symlink to an arbitrary path.

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Affected products

6 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.

References

LinkTags
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2021-23239 ExploitIssue TrackingThird Party Advisory
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/11/msg00007.html Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/EE42Y35SMJOLONAIBNYNFC7
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/GMY4VSSBIND7VAYSN6T7XIW
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202101-33 Third Party Advisory
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20210129-0010/ Third Party Advisory
https://www.sudo.ws/stable.html#1.9.5 Release NotesVendor Advisory
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2021-23239 ExploitIssue TrackingThird Party Advisory
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/11/msg00007.html Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/EE42Y35SMJOLONAIBNYNFC7
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/GMY4VSSBIND7VAYSN6T7XIW
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202101-33 Third Party Advisory
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20210129-0010/ Third Party Advisory
https://www.sudo.ws/stable.html#1.9.5 Release NotesVendor Advisory

Track CVE-2021-23239 inside VULONE

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Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.

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Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2021-23239), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-11-13). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.