CWE-271

Privilege Dropping / Lowering Errors

The product does not drop privileges before passing control of a resource to an actor that does not have those privileges.

CVE-2026-35535 (GCVE-0-2026-35535)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-04-03 02:21 – Updated: 2026-04-04 03:55
VLAI
Summary
In Sudo through 1.9.17p2 before 3e474c2, a failure of a setuid, setgid, or setgroups call, during a privilege drop before running the mailer, is not a fatal error and can lead to privilege escalation.
Severity
7.4 (High)
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE
  • CWE-271 - Privilege Dropping / Lowering Errors
Assigner
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version
Sudo project Sudo Affected: 0 , < 3e474c2f201484be83d994ae10a4e20e8c81bb69 (git)
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Mitigation ID: MIT-46

Phase: Architecture and Design

Strategy: Separation of Privilege

Description:

  • Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.
Mitigation ID: MIT-1

Phases: Architecture and Design, Operation

Description:

  • Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
Mitigation ID: MIT-49

Phase: Architecture and Design

Strategy: Separation of Privilege

Description:

  • Consider following the principle of separation of privilege. Require multiple conditions to be met before permitting access to a system resource.

No CAPEC attack patterns related to this CWE.

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