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Privilege separation is one of the fundamental security paradigms implemented in Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Regular users operate with limited privileges in order to reduce the scope of their influence to their own environment, and not the wider operating system.
A special user, called root
, has “super-user” privileges. This is an administrative account without the restrictions that are present on normal users. Users can execute commands with “super-user” or “root” privileges in a number of different ways.
In this article, we will discuss how to correctly and securely obtain root
privileges, with a special focus on editing the /etc/sudoers
file.
We will be completing these steps on an Ubuntu 16.04 server, but most modern Linux distributions should operate in a similar manner.
This guide assumes that you have already completed the initial server setup discussed here. Log into your server as regular, non-root user and continue below.
There are three basic ways to obtain root
privileges, which vary in their level of sophistication.
The simplest and most straight forward method of obtaining root
privileges is simply to log into your server as the root
user from the onset.
If you are logging into a local machine (or using out-of-band Console Access if you are using DigitalOcean), simply enter “root” as your username at the login prompt and enter the root
password when asked.
If you are logging in through SSH, specify the root
user prior to the IP address or domain name in your SSH connection string:
ssh root@server_domain_or_IP
If you have not set up SSH keys for the root
user, enter the root
password when prompted.
Logging in as root
is usually not recommended, because it is easy to begin using the system for non-administrative tasks, which is dangerous.
The next way to gain super-user privileges allows you to become the root
user at any time, as you need it.
We can do this by invoking the su
command, which stands for “substitute user”. To gain root
privileges, simply type:
su
You will be prompted for the root
user’s password, after which, you will be dropped into a root
shell session.
When you have finished the tasks which require root
privileges, return to your normal shell by typing:
exit
The final, and most complex, way of obtaining root
privileges that we will discuss is with the sudo
command.
The sudo
command allows you to execute one-off commands with root
privileges, without the need to spawn a new shell. It is executed like this:
sudo command_to_execute
Unlike su
, the sudo
command will request the password of the user calling the command, not the root
password.
Because of its security implications, sudo
access is not granted to users by default, and must be set up before it functions correctly. If you followed the initial server setup guide, you already completed a bare-bones configuration.
In the following section, we will discuss how to modify the configuration in greater detail.
The sudo
command is configured through a file located at /etc/sudoers
.
Warning:Never edit this file with a normal text editor! Always use the visudo
command instead!
Because improper syntax in the /etc/sudoers
file can leave you with a system where it is impossible to obtain elevated privileges, it is important to use the visudo
command to edit the file.
The visudo
command opens a text editor like normal, but it validates the syntax of the file upon saving. This prevents configuration errors from blocking sudo
operations, which may be your only way of obtaining root
privileges.
Traditionally, visudo
opens the /etc/sudoers
file with the vi
text editor. Ubuntu, however, has configured visudo
to use the nano
text editor instead.
If you would like to change it back to vi
, issue the following command:
sudo update-alternatives --config editor
OutputThere are 4 choices for the alternative editor (providing /usr/bin/editor).
Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /bin/nano 40 auto mode
1 /bin/ed -100 manual mode
2 /bin/nano 40 manual mode
3 /usr/bin/vim.basic 30 manual mode
4 /usr/bin/vim.tiny 10 manual mode
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
Select the number that corresponds with the choice you would like to make.
On CentOS, you can change this value by adding the following line to your ~/.bashrc
:
export EDITOR=`which name_of_editor`
Source the file to implement the changes:
. ~/.bashrc
After you have configured visudo
, execute the command to access the /etc/sudoers
file:
sudo visudo
You will be presented with the /etc/sudoers
file in your selected text editor.
I have copied and pasted the file from Ubuntu 16.04, with comments removed. The CentOS /etc/sudoers
file has many more lines, some of which we will not discuss in this guide./etc/sudoers
Defaults env_reset
Defaults mail_badpass
Defaults secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
Let’s take a look at what these lines do.
The first line, “Defaults env_reset”, resets the terminal environment to remove any user variables. This is a safety measure used to clear potentially harmful environmental variables from the sudo
session.
The second line, Defaults mail_badpass
, tells the system to mail notices of bad sudo
password attempts to the configured mailto
user. By default, this is the root
account.
The third line, which begins with “Defaults secure_path=…”, specifies the PATH
(the places in the filesystem the operating system will look for applications) that will be used for sudo
operations. This prevents using user paths which may be harmful.
The fourth line, , which dictates the root
user’s sudo
privileges, is different from the preceding lines. Let’s take a look at what the different fields mean:
root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
root
).demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
root
user can run commands as all users.demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
root
user can run commands as all groups.demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
This means that our root
user can run any command using sudo
, as long as they provide their password.
The next two lines are similar to the user privilege lines, but they specify sudo
rules for groups.
Names beginning with a “%” indicate group names.
Here, we see the “admin” group can execute any command as any user on any host. Similarly, the sudo
group can has the same privileges, but can execute as any group as well.
The last line might look like a comment at first glance:/etc/sudoers
. . .
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
It does begin with a #
, which usually indicates a comment. However, this line actually indicates that files within the /etc/sudoers.d
directory will be sourced and applied as well.
Files within that directory follow the same rules as the /etc/sudoers
file itself. Any file that does not end in ~
and that does not have a .
in it will be read and applied to the sudo
configuration.
This is mainly meant for applications to alter sudo
privileges upon installation. Putting all of the associated rules within a single file in the /etc/sudoers.d
directory can make it easy to see which privileges are associated with which accounts and to reverse credentials easily without having to try to manipulate the /etc/sudoers
file directly.
As with the /etc/sudoers
file itself, you should always edit files within the /etc/sudoers.d
directory with visudo
. The syntax for editing these files would be:
sudo visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/file_to_edit
The most common operation that users want to accomplish when managing sudo
permissions is to grant a new user general sudo
access. This is useful if you want to give an account full administrative access to the system.
The easiest way of doing this on a system set up with a general purpose administration group, like the Ubuntu system in this guide, is actually to just add the user in question to that group.
For example, on Ubuntu 16.04, the sudo
group has full admin privileges. We can grant a user these same privileges by adding them to the group like this:
sudo usermod -aG sudo username
The gpasswd
command can also be used:
sudo gpasswd -a username sudo
These will both accomplish the same thing.
On CentOS, this is usually the wheel
group instead of the sudo
group:
sudo usermod -aG wheel username
Or, using gpasswd
:
sudo gpasswd -a username wheel
On CentOS, if adding the user to the group does not work immediately, you may have to edit the /etc/sudoers
file to uncomment the group name:
sudo visudo
/etc/sudoers
. . .
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
. . .
Now that we have gotten familiar with the general syntax of the file, let’s create some new rules.
The sudoers
file can be organized more easily by grouping things with various kinds of “aliases”.
For instance, we can create three different groups of users, with overlapping membership:/etc/sudoers
. . .
User_Alias GROUPONE = abby, brent, carl
User_Alias GROUPTWO = brent, doris, eric,
User_Alias GROUPTHREE = doris, felicia, grant
. . .
Group names must start with a capital letter. We can then allow members of GROUPTWO
to update the apt
database by creating a rule like this:/etc/sudoers
. . .
GROUPTWO ALL = /usr/bin/apt-get update
. . .
If we do not specify a user/group to run as, as above, sudo
defaults to the root
user.
We can allow members of GROUPTHREE
to shutdown and reboot the machine by creating a “command alias” and using that in a rule for GROUPTHREE
:/etc/sudoers
. . .
Cmnd_Alias POWER = /sbin/shutdown, /sbin/halt, /sbin/reboot, /sbin/restart
GROUPTHREE ALL = POWER
. . .
We create a command alias called POWER
that contains commands to power off and reboot the machine. We then allow the members of GROUPTHREE
to execute these commands.
We can also create “Run as” aliases, which can replace the portion of the rule that specifies the user to execute the command as:/etc/sudoers
. . .
Runas_Alias WEB = www-data, apache
GROUPONE ALL = (WEB) ALL
. . .
This will allow anyone who is a member of GROUPONE
to execute commands as the www-data
user or the apache
user.
Just keep in mind that later rules will override earlier rules when there is a conflict between the two.
There are a number of ways that you can achieve more control over how sudo
reacts to a call.
The updatedb
command associated with the mlocate
package is relatively harmless on a single-user system. If we want to allow users to execute it with root
privileges without having to type a password, we can make a rule like this:/etc/sudoers
. . .
GROUPONE ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/updatedb
. . .
NOPASSWD
is a “tag” that means no password will be requested. It has a companion command called PASSWD
, which is the default behavior. A tag is relevant for the rest of the rule unless overruled by its “twin” tag later down the line.
For instance, we can have a line like this:/etc/sudoers
. . .
GROUPTWO ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/updatedb, PASSWD: /bin/kill
. . .
Another helpful tag is NOEXEC
, which can be used to prevent some dangerous behavior in certain programs.
For example, some programs, like “less”, can spawn other commands by typing this from within their interface:
!command_to_run
This basically executes any command the user gives it with the same permissions that “less” is running under, which can be quite dangerous.
To restrict this, we could use a line like this:/etc/sudoers
. . .
username ALL = NOEXEC: /usr/bin/less
. . .
There are a few more pieces of information that may be useful when dealing with sudo
.
If you specified a user or group to “run as” in the configuration file, you can execute commands as those users by using the “-u” and “-g” flags, respectively:
sudo -u run_as_user command sudo -g run_as_group command
For convenience, by default, sudo
will save your authentication details for a certain amount of time in one terminal. This means you won’t have to type your password in again until that timer runs out.
For security purposes, if you wish to clear this timer when you are done running administrative commands, you can run:
sudo -k
If, on the other hand, you want to “prime” the sudo
command so that you won’t be prompted later, or to renew your sudo
lease, you can always type:
sudo -v
You will be prompted for your password, which will be cached for later sudo
uses until the sudo
time frame expires.
If you are simply wondering what kind of privileges are defined for your username, you can type:
sudo -l
This will list all of the rules in the /etc/sudoers
file that apply to your user. This gives you a good idea of what you will or will not be allowed to do with sudo
as any user.
There are many times when you will execute a command and it will fail because you forgot to preface it with sudo
. To avoid having to re-type the command, you can take advantage of a bash functionality that means “repeat last command”:
sudo !!
The double exclamation point will repeat the last command. We preceded it with sudo
to quickly change the unprivileged command to a privileged command.
For some fun, you can add the following line to your /etc/sudoers
file with visudo
:
sudo visudo
/etc/sudoers
. . .
Defaults insults
. . .
This will cause sudo
to return a silly insult when a user types in an incorrect password for sudo
. We can use sudo -k
to clear the previous sudo
cached password to try it out:
sudo -k sudo ls
Output[sudo] password for demo: # enter an incorrect password here to see the results
Your mind just hasn't been the same since the electro-shock, has it?
[sudo]
password for demo: My mind is going. I can feel it.
You should now have a basic understanding of how to read and modify the sudoers
file, and a grasp on the various methods that you can use to obtain root
privileges.
Remember, super-user privileges are not given to regular users for a reason. It is essential that you understand what each command does that you execute with root
privileges. Do not take the responsibility lightly. Learn the best way to use these tools for your use-case, and lock down any functionality that is not needed.