I don't think using the sudoers.d directory is a good idea, because it is a security problem. There are two specific issues with it.
First, a hacker may be able to add his own file to the sudoers.d directory. That would be a classic injection/privilege escalation attack. Granted, it's a bit more difficult because /etc/sudoers.d has permissions restricting it to root, but since it is also managed by chef, there can still be ways for a non-root user to insert a file into this directory.
The bigger issue is that there is no good way to automatically clean up obsolete entries from the sudoers.d directory; you may end up giving sudo access to people who should no longer have it.
From a security standpoint, it is dramatically better to only have a sudoers file and no include statement, especially not an include of a directory.
Kevin Keane
The NetTech
http://www.4nettech.com
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-----Original message-----
From: tayworm . <
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Sent: Friday 13th March 2015 13:03
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Subject: [chef] Re: Chef's sudo cookbook and the passwordless access