What is CVE-2019-19232?

CVE-2019-19232 is a high-severity vulnerability in Sudo. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2019-12-19.

How severe is CVE-2019-19232?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.

Is CVE-2019-19232 known to be exploited?

1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Vulnerability in Sudo

CVE-2019-19232

In Sudo through 1.8.29, an attacker with access to a Runas ALL sudoer account can impersonate a nonexistent user by invoking sudo with a numeric uid that is not associated with any user. NOTE: The software maintainer believes that this is not a vulnerability because running a command via sudo as a user not present in the local password database is an intentional feature. Because this behavior surprised some users, sudo 1.8.30 introduced an option to enable/disable this behavior with the default being disabled. However, this does not change the fact that sudo was behaving as intended, and as documented, in earlier versions

Published 2019-12-19 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.033 (88.5th percentile), scored 2026-10-25.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 88th percentile — 88.5% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.033 · newest: 0.033 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Sudo

Public proof-of-concept exploits

fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-19232?: CVE-2019-19232 is a high-severity vulnerability in Sudo. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2019-12-19.
How severe is CVE-2019-19232?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2019-19232 known to be exploited?: 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.