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You are here: Home » Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands

By Abhishek Ghosh March 30, 2014 8:46 am Updated on March 30, 2014

Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands

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Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands for Apple’s OS X, BSD and GNU Linux in various ways. This is a good way to increase security. It is not that, always we want to Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands for Not Relying, but mostly it is to prevent unknowing done errors which basically can destroy a system. If one changes the group ownership to Apache (www-data) with sudo command while at root, it will be impossible in most cases to revive the system.

 

Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands : Understanding the Difference of Philosophy in GNU Linux and UNIX

 

In UNIX, there is WHEEL GROUP. We talked about this UNIX Wheel Group in details in previously published article. Why we mentioned, re-enabling Wheel Group increases the control on users was explained. GNU Linux, by Philosophy do not like that way.

As we said there, by running visudo command, you can restrict by specific commands you want to restrict :

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# restrict NetworkManager ; add these lines
user ALL=!/etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart
user ALL=!/etc/init.d/network restart

But if someone runs :

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sudo bash

This is the basic reason we mentioned about Wheel Group, see Arch Linux Wiki :

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https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/sudo

Practically, the methods people mentions are for casual users; a serious user with definite target can manipulate the file permissions. There is another known method :

If we edit the /etc/sudoers.d file instead of modifying /etc/sudoers; If your user is called user and your host is called host you could add these lines to /etc/sudoers.d :

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user host = (root) NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown
user host = (root) NOPASSWD: /sbin/reboot

If password is protected to allow, obviously except the root none will able to run any commands except which commands are whitelisted.

Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands

 

Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands But Do Not Get Locked

 

In case, you are locked, you need to know about pkexec command :

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http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man1/pkexec.1.html
#Example
pkexec visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/shutdown
pkexec chown root:root /etc/sudoers.d/shutdown
pkexec chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/shutdown
# the permission will become
ls -l /etc/sudoers.d/shutdown
# output
-r--r----- 1 root root 86 Jul 16 15:37 /etc/sudoers.d/shutdown

You can check for Cmnd_Alias function :

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https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sudoers

But, sudo assumes we trust our users, that is GNU Philosophy :

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visudo
# Edit to
Defaults logfile=/var/log/sudo.log
Defaults timestamp_timeout=0
# Add Alias
Cmnd_Alias NVSU = /usr/sbin/visudo
Cmnd_Alias NSU = /bin/su
Cmnd_Alias NSHELLS = /bin/sh,/bin/bash
Cmnd_Alias NYUM = /usr/bin/yum
Cmnd_Alias NPASSWD = /usr/bin/passwd
# enforce rules
%group_name ALL=(ALL) ALL, !NVSU, !NSU, !NSHELLS,!NPASSWD

Whenever you user can access to usernamed folder and you have some softwares like Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl – any of them installed, it is basically possible to do many things. Wheel Group system actually makes the administration easier.

Tagged With sudo restrict to one command , restrict sudo access , restrict sudo -i visudo , restrict sudo , restirct su root linux , restct sudo access in linux , linux allow user to restart tomcat sudoers , https://thecustomizewindows com/2014/03/restrict-sudo-users-running-specific-commands/ , how to restrict an exe as sudo only linux , user restrict

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Abhishek Ghosh

About Abhishek Ghosh

Abhishek Ghosh is a Businessman, Surgeon, Author and Blogger. You can keep touch with him on Twitter - @AbhishekCTRL.

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About This Article

Cite this article as: Abhishek Ghosh, "Restrict sudo Users Running Specific Commands," in The Customize Windows, March 30, 2014, February 4, 2023, https://thecustomizewindows.com/2014/03/restrict-sudo-users-running-specific-commands/.

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