Isn't the real meat of this issue the commands an unprivileged user is
permitted to execute via sudo?

Sudo isn't a blanket 'execute anything' unless it's set up that way.
Instead, you should carefully choose the specific command(s) that the user
needs to be allowed to execute. That should involve execution from an
absolute path and a protected binary.

For example, if visudo contains this

/sbin/ifconfig eth0

Then all the user can execute is the ifconfig command from the protected
binary in /sbin/ifconfig to see the state of the interface.

Or this

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 *

Allows him/her full control of eth0 - but still from the protected binary in
/sbin/ifconfig.

If you specify this:

ifconfig eth0 *

Then all bets are off...

-----Burton

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