During 28C3, I was being over-paranoid about the security of my laptop, and I accidentally did something really really (really) stupid to my /etc/sudoers file, I commented out this line:

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
# %admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

See what I did there? No more sudo for my admin user. End of story. I thought I was doomed. The only way to resolve this situation, essentially, is to boot into some sort of safe mode with the Mac OS X installation disk. Needless to say I didn't have it with me.

Luckily, Mac OS X is built in a way that allows resolving a corrupt sudoers, exploiting the way the OS manages permissions. This method was first described here, props to Astrails for the idea.

The idea is that the while the command line sudo works with the sudoers file, the UI authentication does not.

Exploiting this, you can change the file permissions on /etc/sudoers without needing sudo access. All you need to do is open a Finder window, Shift-Cmd-G and go to the /etc folder. From there, select the sudoers file and open its info pane (Cmd-I). Scroll down to the Sharing & Permissions panel, and unlock it using your admin password. You now can temporarily change the file permissions such that you'll be able to edit it without sudo access.

Now all you need to do is fix the crap that you did to your sudoers file, reset the permissions back to 440 and you're all set.

Next time, if you think you need to edit your sudoers file, DO NOT.