sudo-rs
Ranked 21 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Rust rewrite of sudo that removes complexity behind vulnerabilities and drops insecure features; critics note gaps in compatibility with original sudo.
Rust rewrite of sudo that removes complexity behind vulnerabilities and drops insecure features; critics note gaps in compatibility with original sudo.
49 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 32
- approval share
- 35%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Memory safety by design
“every instance of unsafe that I could find (except one, in test-only code) was a call to libc”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Zero-day CSS: CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild” “prevents whole classes of vulnerabilities from being introduced in the future”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” “the rust rewrite of sudo etc. Despite the memory safety advantages”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Deep dive into Turso, the "SQLite rewrite in Rust"” Less code and complexity to attack
“sudo-rs precisely removes a lot of complexity that’s the source of vulnerabilities in normal sudo”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Memory Safety” “there is no value in having a sudo alternative that ditches antiquated, insecure functionality”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” “thereby producing an overall simpler tool with less surface area to attack”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” Reported working well in daily use
“I am using sudo-rs on my arch install for over a year havent had any issues yet.”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “Hard Rust requirements from May onward” “As such a rewrite went so well for sudo-rs.”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “C Is Best”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Rushed into Ubuntu before maturity
“replacing perfectly functional software for unfinished buggy Rust versions just to replace C without any needs”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Sudo-Rs Affected by Multiple Security Vulnerabilities – Impacting Ubuntu 25.10” “they forgot to remove Rust coreutils and sudo-rs from Ubuntu prior to releasing 26.04”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Released” “Seeing v0.xxx on a program used by Ubuntu as a base system utility is ridiculous.”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.04 ends a 40-year old sudo tradition” - Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Sudo-Rs Affected by Multiple Security Vulnerabilities – Impacting Ubuntu 25.10”
Safety record disputed, has unsafe code
“sudo-rs for example which is specifically mentioned has a drastically worst safety record than the C sudo.”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust” “sudo-rs for example which is specifically mentioned has a drastically worst safety record than the C sudo”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust” “forced into Ubuntu despite bugs and memory unsafety in the Rust implementations”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Canonical Backs New Project to Translate Large C Codebases into Safe Rust” - Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Zero-day CSS: CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild”
Compatibility gaps with original sudo
“It's a sudo replacement, ideal a one to one replacement, but it's not 100% and for how long?”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust” “We already had a problem with sudo-rs not handling all the options that previous sudo did”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils” Long-term maintenance is uncertain
“there is no guarantee that sudo-rs and similar projects will be successful, good and continued to be maintained”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” “They are very rarely maintainted to the same quality of the originals.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 56 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“We already had a problem with sudo-rs not handling all the options that previous sudo did”
“forced into Ubuntu despite bugs and memory unsafety in the Rust implementations”
“it's not as safe (way worst track record) than the C version”
“thereby producing an overall simpler tool with less surface area to attack”
“they forgot to remove Rust coreutils and sudo-rs from Ubuntu prior to releasing 26.04”
“sudo-rs at least at the time was missing the flag for ask pass”
“Opinionated security tools maintainers rarely get it right.”
“only because nixos and easy heh”
“throws the baby out with the bathwater”
“So now there's a few additional steps when I install a new distribution”
“I was removing sudo-rs, uutils and some of the systemd-* packages from fresh Ubuntu installations”
“it did require sudo-rs to exist”
“Seeing v0.xxx on a program used by Ubuntu as a base system utility is ridiculous.”
“sudo-rs for example which is specifically mentioned has a drastically worst safety record than the C sudo.”
“sudo-rs for example which is specifically mentioned has a drastically worst safety record than the C sudo”
“It's a sudo replacement, ideal a one to one replacement, but it's not 100% and for how long?”
“every instance of unsafe that I could find (except one, in test-only code) was a call to libc”
“it proclaimed loudly that it is memory safe, but its code has lots of unsafe.”
“Projects like sudo-rs take the same approach.”
“there is no value in having a sudo alternative that ditches antiquated, insecure functionality”
“prevents whole classes of vulnerabilities from being introduced in the future”
“Just look at a the sudo-rs debacle and that's without money involved.”
“They are very rarely maintainted to the same quality of the originals.”
“Similarly sudo-rs and doas-rs exist now.”
“rewriting mature software in a meme language with less features than the original and introducing new bugs in the process”
“there is no guarantee that sudo-rs and similar projects will be successful, good and continued to be maintained”
“the rust rewrite of sudo etc. Despite the memory safety advantages”
“As such a rewrite went so well for sudo-rs.”
“Similarly to rust coreutils, fake sudo and the likes that they push.”
“sudo-rs precisely removes a lot of complexity that’s the source of vulnerabilities in normal sudo”
“sudo-rs was transparent with how far it had gotten in compatibility and feature parity”
“It is as safe; it just can't automatically make all C code safer like Fil-C can”
“sudo-rs: uses pam compiled with Yolo-C, so it's not actually safe.”
“why are we retiring it for a new rust version over several years which will allow extra security issues during that time”
“since this is a drop-in replacement, it inherits all the complexities”
“replacing battle tested production quality sw for alpha quality ones”
“if rust was used to replace other bits instead of security vital things like sudo, there would be less complaints”
“replacing perfectly functional software for unfinished buggy Rust versions just to replace C without any needs”
“I am using sudo-rs on my arch install for over a year havent had any issues yet.”
“the changes we made over in Ubuntu to switch to rust-coreutils and sudo-rs”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.