Where are sudo's insults stored?

Question

For those who like humour, sudo can be configured to print a random more or less insulting or funny phrase instead of the neutral Sorry, try again. by adding the line below to /etc/sudoers (using the command sudo visudo, not editing manually!):

Defaults insults

Here are some examples:

[sudo] password for bytecommander: 
The more you drive -- the dumber you get.
[sudo] password for bytecommander: 
I've seen penguins that can type better than that.
[sudo] password for bytecommander: 
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
[sudo] password for bytecommander: 
He has fallen in the water!
[sudo] password for bytecommander: 
Hold it up to the light --- not a brain in sight!

Now just for fun I'd like to read through all of them, but entering wrong passwords all day is not really the best method (delay after each attempt, only 2 messages per 3 attempts, abort after 3 attempts, ...).

So... where are these insults actually stored? Any plain text file I can directly read? Or hard coded strings in the source code?

How can I get a list of all available sudo insult messages?

Answer 1

They are in the binary file

/usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so

(found by: find /usr/lib/sudo -type f | xargs grep "fallen in the water")

If you enable source downloads and do

apt source sudo

You can find the insults files in the source directory under

plugins/sudoers

The files are

ins_2001.h
ins_classic.h
ins_csops.h
ins_goons.h
insults.h

Example of what these files look like:

#ifndef SUDOERS_INS_GOONS_H
#define SUDOERS_INS_GOONS_H

/*
 * Insults from the "Goon Show."
 */

    "You silly, twisted boy you.",
    "He has fallen in the water!",
    "We'll all be murdered in our beds!",
    "You can't come in. Our tiger has got flu",

and so on... they are quite readable.

Answer 2

Make your own insults

You can change sudo insults without recompiling sudo.

See: Adding new sudo insults

---

Header files with insults

When we look at all the insults we discover an interesting tidbit: saying Broccoli is politically correct, but saying Burrito is not. All the insults are listed below.

ins_2001.h (2001 Space Odyssey insults):

.
    /*
     * HAL insults (paraphrased) from 2001.
     */

    "Just what do you think you're doing Dave?",
    "It can only be attributed to human error.",
    "That's something I cannot allow to happen.",
    "My mind is going. I can feel it.",
    "Sorry about this, I know it's a bit silly.",
    "Take a stress pill and think things over.",
    "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.",
    "I feel much better now.",

ins_classic.h (Original Sudo 8 insults):

    /*
     * Insults from the original sudo(8).
     */

    "Wrong!  You cheating scum!",
#ifdef PC_INSULTS
    "And you call yourself a Rocket Scientist!",
#else
    "No soap, honkie-lips.",
#endif
    "Where did you learn to type?",
    "Are you on drugs?",
    "My pet ferret can type better than you!",
    "You type like i drive.",
    "Do you think like you type?",
    "Your mind just hasn't been the same since the electro-shock, has it?",

ins_csops.h (CSOps insults):

    /*
     * CSOps insults (may be site dependent).
     */

    "Maybe if you used more than just two fingers...",
    "BOB says:  You seem to have forgotten your passwd, enter another!",
    "stty: unknown mode: doofus",
    "I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.",
    "The more you drive -- the dumber you get.",
#ifdef PC_INSULTS
    "Listen, broccoli brains, I don't have time to listen to this trash.",
#else
    "Listen, burrito brains, I don't have time to listen to this trash.",
#endif
    "I've seen penguins that can type better than that.",
    "Have you considered trying to match wits with a rutabaga?",
    "You speak an infinite deal of nothing",

ins_goons.h (Goon Show insults):

.
    /*
     * Insults from the "Goon Show."
     */

    "You silly, twisted boy you.",
    "He has fallen in the water!",
    "We'll all be murdered in our beds!",
    "You can't come in. Our tiger has got flu",
    "I don't wish to know that.",
    "What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?",
    "You can't get the wood, you know.",
    "You'll starve!",
    "... and it used to be so popular...",
    "Pauses for audience applause, not a sausage",
    "Hold it up to the light --- not a brain in sight!",
    "Have a gorilla...",
    "There must be cure for it!",
    "There's a lot of it about, you know.",
    "You do that again and see what happens...",
    "Ying Tong Iddle I Po",
    "Harm can come to a young lad like that!",
    "And with that remarks folks, the case of the Crown vs yourself was proven.",
    "Speak English you fool --- there are no subtitles in this scene.",
    "You gotta go owwwww!",
    "I have been called worse.",
    "It's only your word against mine.",
    "I think ... err ... I think ... I think I'll go home",

The file insults.h contains compiler instructions on which of the above insults to include in the compiled sudo program. Indeed, you could create your own insults file, add the name to insults.h and recompile to have messages like, "What, are you an ArchLinux user?" or "This isn't Windows where errors are commonplace!", etc.

Notice the #ifdef PC_INSULTS in some of the insult files. This doesn't mean "if you have a personal computer" it means "if you want to be politically correct."

---

Listing all insults to your terminal

For Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS you can use this:

strings /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so | head -n1670 | tail -n49

For other Ubuntu versions the line numbers passed to head command might change. Hopefully others can verify for their version.

Answer 3

With

dpkg -L sudo | xargs grep dumber

we can search which files from package sudo contain the word dumber.

The only match is in file /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so. This is a binary file so we use the strings command to only get things that looks like being human readable. As it's a lot we pipe the result into less:

strings /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so | less

In less we can use

/dumber

to search again for the word "dumber". That gets us right into the insults. Scroll up and down with the cursor keys and quit with q

Answer 4

The above answers are great for offline search. But we are online. So open Debian code search and try one one of the insults here . It instantly tells you it's in sudo_1.8.12-1/plugins/sudoers/ins_csops.h. This has the advantage of finding it everywhere be it a configuration file to be deployed in /etc or whatever. And since it's a .h file, it's visible it's in the source and not something you can modify.

Answer 5

To add to the other answers, the insults appear to be in the .rodata section of sudoers.so. You can use objcopy to somewhat restrict the output, although there will still be a lot of false positives:

$ objcopy /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so /dev/null --dump-section .rodata=/dev/stdout | strings | head
/build/sudo-g3ghsu/sudo-1.8.16/plugins/sudoers/auth/sudo_auth.c
invalid authentication methods
Invalid authentication methods compiled into sudo!  You may not mix standalone and non-standalone authentication.
There are no authentication methods compiled into sudo!  If you want to turn off authentication, use the --disable-authentication configure option.
Unable to initialize authentication methods.
Just what do you think you're doing Dave?
It can only be attributed to human error.
That's something I cannot allow to happen.
My mind is going. I can feel it.
Sorry about this, I know it's a bit silly.
$ 

Answer 6

If you'd like to check the source code...

https://github.com/sudo-project/sudo/tree/main/plugins/sudoers

Check all the files starting with ins_