pgAdmin 4: Server passwords are left in pgAdmin's process environment (pgadmin.org pgAdmin 4)

CVE-2026-116246
HIGH 7.0

At a glance

Source
NVD
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
PostgreSQL
NVD status
Received

Description

To pass a server's password to psql and to the utilities pgAdmin 4 runs as background processes, the server manager wrote it into pgAdmin's own process environment: as PGPASSWORD for the PSQL tool, and under a per-process variable for a utility. Nothing removed it afterwards. pgAdmin's environment is shared by every user's requests and copied into every process it starts, so in server mode another user's later PSQL session or utility inherited the password, and libpq used PGPASSWORD for any connection made without a password of its own, letting one user connect with another user's saved password. The fix puts the password only into the environment built for the process that needs it and starts psql with a copy of pgAdmin's environment instead of the environment itself. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: before 9.19.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-214 — Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive Information
  • CWE-526 — Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:NPostgreSQL
CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.0CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:P/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:L/SA:NPostgreSQL
CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.0CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:P/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD · f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007 (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:NNVD · f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007 (Secondary)

European references

Affected products

ProductVersions
pgadmin.org · pgAdmin 4affected 0 < 9.19

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD