A now-fixed Sudo vulnerability allowed any local user to gain root privileges on Unix-like operating systems without requiring authentication. Sudo is a Unix program ...

A local privilege escalation security vulnerability could allow attackers to gain root access on Ubuntu systems by exploiting a double-free memory corruption bug in GNOME's AccountsService component.

Back in the early days of Linux, things were exponentially more complicated. The distributions were far less mature and required a particular system account to get things done. That account was root - ...