Funny, I always thought this was supposed to be a feature.
It remembered your authentication for a few minutes after using sudo. I assumed it was part of the OSX auth system and would forget if you locked the screen.
Passwords are both security flaws and UX features -- they're inherently flawed, cannot be fixed, and are the only authentication system most people can use successfully.
It is a feature that it caches your authentication for a few minutes. It's not a feature that other processes running as your user, such as something that manages to do a sandbox escape in your browser, are also able to acquire credentials.