ZPanel zsudo Local Privilege Escalation

Vulnerability Description

ZPanel includes a helper binary named zsudo, intended to allow restricted privilege escalation for administrative tasks. However, when misconfigured in /etc/sudoers, zsudo can be invoked by low-privileged users to execute arbitrary commands as root. This flaw enables local attackers with shell access to escalate privileges by writing a payload to a writable directory and executing it via zsudo. The vulnerability is particularly impactful in post-exploitation scenarios following web server compromise, where the attacker inherits access to zsudo.

References

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/master/modules/exploits/linux/local/zpanel_zsudo.rb
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/26451
• https://github.com/zpanel/zpanelx
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/zpanel-zsudo-local-priv-esc