sudo
Shares rank 8 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
People recommend it as battle-tested infrastructure that lets you start with few privileges and elevate when needed. Critics most often cite its history of security vulnerabilities.
People recommend it as battle-tested infrastructure that lets you start with few privileges and elevate when needed. Critics most often cite its history of security vulnerabilities.
75 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 34
- criticize it
- 41
- approval share
- 45%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 34 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Praised as smooth, awesome software
“I love the hell out of the program; it's an essential part of how I get shit done on my PC.”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root” “It's so smooth I don't even consider it software.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” “Sudo is an awesome piece of work.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” Battle-tested, long-trusted Unix tool
“basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “APT Rust requirement raises questions” “stuff that's already battle hardened”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Sudo-Rs Affected by Multiple Security Vulnerabilities” Critical infrastructure on Linux and Unix
“one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on nearly every Linux and Unix system”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” “his code runs in basically every big script on the planet”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” Safer than running everything as root
“It's simply better to start with little privileges and then elevate when needed.”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Capsudo: Rethinking sudo with object capabilities” “sudo is safer, the alternative is running everything as root”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Long history of security vulnerabilities
“The ability to whitelist specific args for commands has been the source of several (countless?) sudo CVEs over the years.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS” “Despite being patched, the presence of prior vulnerabilities [1] and hacks makes it fundamentally not trustworthy.”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “EU Age Verification Hacked in 2 Minutes: What Happened” “The "perfectly functional one" from 1980 also has multiple critical vulnerabilities in it in recent years.”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Sudo-Rs Affected by Multiple Security Vulnerabilities – Impacting Ubuntu 25.10” - Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Sudo-Rs Affected by Multiple Security Vulnerabilities”
Overcomplicated with too many features
“Sudo is overcomplicated and since this is a drop-in replacement, it inherits all the complexities.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Security issues discovered in sudo-rs” “sudo had grown a lot of features and a complicated config syntax over the years”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “APT Rust requirement raises questions” “the scope of the tool should be smaller and it violates the Unix philosophy”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” Can be bypassed by malware or agents
“There's no way to ensure that nobody overwrote your .profile or .bashrc with a backdoored sudo that steals your password”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 on Hacker News “using sudo to whitelist a prefix allows an agent to create a .deb themselves and then install it directly via apt”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board” “malware can mask the sudo command and intercept the password so trivially”
Comment from 30 Aug 2026 in “Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root” Silent password and slow failures
“if my system's DNS is broken, I get to wait 60 seconds for sudo to work, during which time I can't even ctrl+c to cancel”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Todd C. Miller – sudo Maintainer for over 30 years” “sudo is the only case of a silent password I've encountered in my life and it's really uncomfortable.”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords”
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 84 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“sudo is safer, the alternative is running everything as root”
“using sudo to whitelist a prefix allows an agent to create a .deb themselves and then install it directly via apt”
“malware can mask the sudo command and intercept the password so trivially”
“It's useless for constraining apps you run as your own user ID.”
“the grandparent does point out 1 major flaw with sudo being a typically command that goes through normal path discovery”
“There's no way to ensure that nobody overwrote your .profile or .bashrc with a backdoored sudo that steals your password”
“it preloads a dummy library that null-routes all exec calls to prevent this kind of shell leak”
“The ability to whitelist specific args for commands has been the source of several (countless?) sudo CVEs over the years.”
“Despite being patched, the presence of prior vulnerabilities [1] and hacks makes it fundamentally not trustworthy.”
“this is a good change as it also emphasizes window/terminal focus is at correct place”
“This is a change that someone can in fact think all the way through and say”
“sudo is the only case of a silent password I've encountered in my life and it's really uncomfortable.”
“This is a good UX change, one of many UX improvements needed on CLIs.”
“make certain that classic sudo is the one installed, rather than sudo-rs”
“you don't know how many characters you need to delete, but now you would”
“You are then leaking the length of your password. This isn't necessarily disastrous for most use cases but it is a negative security attribute.”
“I love the hell out of the program; it's an essential part of how I get shit done on my PC.”
“Very useful when you're running fleets of systems that are more pet than cattle.”
“if my system's DNS is broken, I get to wait 60 seconds for sudo to work, during which time I can't even ctrl+c to cancel”
“made me want to financially support the original author”
“his code runs in basically every big script on the planet”
“sudo has A LOT of features that 95% of people don't use”
“Sudo is an awesome piece of work.”
“why this project is still under active development”
“sudo is valuable, but if Todd stepped away, you could (and would) find other maintainers”
“it seems odd to criticize a tool being used for its original purpose”
“With sudoedit you can give people permissions to edit particular files with elevated permissions.”
“the scope of the tool should be smaller and it violates the Unix philosophy”
“rather than conclude that it's solid and doesn't need further changes”
“There are loads of people that would subscribe to Sudo”
“one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on nearly every Linux and Unix system”
“It's so smooth I don't even consider it software.”
“it's much easier to make (and audit) a single "sudo" than hundreds of random scripts”
“It's simply better to start with little privileges and then elevate when needed.”
“sudo had grown a lot of features and a complicated config syntax over the years”
“basic Unix tools like sudo, etc, that are battle tested since ages”
“it has had buffer overflow and double free vulnerabilities discovered recently”
“The "perfectly functional one" from 1980 also has multiple critical vulnerabilities in it in recent years.”
“stuff that's already battle hardened”
“Sudo is overcomplicated and since this is a drop-in replacement, it inherits all the complexities.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.