Mac OS X-like admin authentication

[Jeremy Dreese]

I've been thinking for awhile now that there must be some way to use sudo and 
pam to allow users to authenticate when running applications via 
point-and-click (as opposed to from the command line).  For those familiar 
with Mac OS X, this is pretty much what OS X does.  When you run an app that 
requires administrator access and assuming your account is listed as an 
"administrator", it pops up a window asking you for *your* password; it then 
runs the app as administrator/root.  In concept this is somewhat similar to 
sudo.  You run an app using sudo; it asks you for *your* password (assuming 
you're not using the NOPASSWD option) and allows you to run the app as 
root/administrator. 
 
I'm thinking that sudo could be combined somehow into a pam module such that 
the pam module checks the sudoers table to see if the user running the app has 
permission to run that particular app.  If so, it pops up a dialog asking for 
the user's password.  Pretty much the same idea was discussed here: 
 
http://www.sudo.ws/mailman/htdig/sudo-workers/2002-September/000256.html 
 
but I don't see any sort of resolution.  Anybody know if this has been done or 
if someone is working on this? 
 
Thanks.