How to always enforce sudo password for specific command?

Question

The other day I was doing some maintenance tasks on my web server. I was in hurry and sleepy, so I did everything using sudo command.

And then, I accidentally pressed Ctrl+V, sending this command to my web server:

sudo rm -rf /*

For those wondering what above command does: This deleted my whole web server

Luckily, I had backups and sadly, I had to spend two more hours being awake to fix this awesome error. But since then, I have been wondering:

Is there a way to always enforce sudo password for specific command?

If the server asked me for a password, I would save myself from lot of trouble. It did not, because I ran about 5 sudo commands before this majestic error.

So, is there a way to do it? I just need the password with the rm command to always be enforced. Other commands I am using are usually nano or cp which both are (to some extent) revertable.

score 19 · Answer 1 · answered May 11 '18 at 11:28

You can set the timestamp_timeout to 0 for particular commands in /etc/sudoers. Create a file visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/pduck with the following content:

Cmnd_Alias DANGEROUS = /bin/rm

Defaults!DANGEROUS timestamp_timeout=0

pduck ALL = (ALL:ALL) DANGEROUS

Now the user pduck is always asked for a password when running sudo rm (no matter what additional parameters are given) even though the user is member of the sudo group and sudo remembers his password for other commands.

The downside is that you cannot easily add parameters to the /bin/rm line in the file to further restrict this. Well… you can, like:

Cmnd_Alias DANGEROUS = /bin/rm -f

but then you just get prompted for exactly sudo rm -f and not (again) for sudo rm -rf, for example.

Rinzwind · Answer 2 · 2018-05-11T07:53:19.790

One method would be to use safe-rm. This will ONLY adress the usage of "rm" and preventing specific versions of "rm" to be run. That includes removing your root system but can also be used to prevent removing of system related directories like "/usr/" or "/var/". From the link:

Reventing the accidental deletion of important files

Safe-rm is a safety tool intended to prevent the accidental deletion of important files by replacing /bin/rm with a wrapper, which checks the given arguments against a configurable blacklist of files and directories that should never be removed.

Users who attempt to delete one of these protected files or directories will not be able to do so and will be shown a warning message instead:
$ rm -rf /usr   
Skipping /usr
(Protected paths can be set both at the site and user levels.)

Recovering important files you deleted by mistake can be quite hard. Protect yourself today by installing safe-rm and reduce the likelihood that you will need to contact a data recovery service!

dessert · Answer 3 · 2018-05-11T23:04:27.233

sudo provides an option -k, --reset-timestamp, see man sudo:

When used in conjunction with a command or an option that may require a password, this option will cause sudo to ignore the user's cached credentials. As a result, sudo will prompt for a password (if one is required by the security policy) and will not update the user's cached credentials.

You could write a simple wrapper for sudo testing for rm -rf /* and running

sudo -k rm -rf /*

instead, e.g. like this:

sudo ()                                                                                                                                                 
{ 
    [[ "$*" == "rm -rf /*" ]] && opt="-k";
    /usr/bin/sudo $opt "$@"
}

Example usage

Testing with echo a here.

$ sudo echo
[sudo] password for dessert: 

$ sudo echo

$ sudo echo a
[sudo] password for dessert: 
a
$ sudo echo a
[sudo] password for dessert: 
a

If you want to be asked every time you run rm in general, you can adapt the above function as follows:

sudo () 
{ 
    [[ "$1" == "rm" ]] && opt="-k";
    /usr/bin/sudo $opt "$@"
}

If you want to combine both general command calls and specific command lines I recommend using case, e.g.:

sudo () 
{ 
    case "$*" in 
        rm*)            opt="-k" ;;
        "mv /home"*)    opt="-k" ;;
        "ln -s /usr/bin/fish /bin/sh") opt="-k" && echo "Don't you dare!" ;;
        *)              opt="" ;;
    esac;
    /usr/bin/sudo $opt "$@"
}

Note that these approaches won't work if you run sudo with options – possible solutions are [[ "$*" =~ " rm " ]] to check for the string “rm” surrounded by spaces or *" rm "*) with case to catch any command line containing “ rm ”.

David Foerster · Answer 4 · 2021-04-26T19:45:51.063

This answer doesn't address the sudo part of your question but on the other hand it addresses a way to mitigate the danger of accidental rm invocations for any user.

You can alias rm to rm -I which

asks for confirmation as soon as it would delete a directory or more than 3 files
as long as you leave out -f which overrides previous -I options.

--one-file-system is another possible safeguard against unintended deletion that I use in my rm alias.

Additionally, you need to ask Bash to expand aliases after sudo with a trailing space in the alias definition (see below).

Set-up

To create such an alias use the command:

alias rm='rm -I --one-file-system'
alias sudo='sudo '

You can put it into your ~/.bashrc or even /etc/bash.bashrc.

Usage

$ sudo rm -r /etc/apt/sources.list.d /*
rm: remove all arguments?

To confirm type yes or its translation into your locale or the first letter of either word and press Enter. Any other input including none aborts the operation.

How to always enforce sudo password for specific command?

4 Answers4

Example usage

Set-up

Usage