When sudo is configured to allow a user to edit files under a directory that they can already write to without using sudo, they can actually edit arbitrary files. Daniel Svartman reported that a configuration like this might be introduced unintentionally if the editable files are specified using wildcards, for example: operator ALL= sudoedit /home/*/*/test.txt The default behaviour of sudo has been changed so that it does not allow editing of a file in a directory that the user can write to, or that is reached by following a symlink in a directory that the user can write to. These restrictions can be disabled, but this is strongly discouraged.