CVE-2026-12050

Published Jun 19, 2026

Last updated a month ago

Overview

Description
SQL injection in pgAdmin 4's named restore point endpoint (POST /browser/server/restore_point/{gid}/{sid}). The user-supplied 'value' field was interpolated directly into the SQL string with str.format() instead of being passed as a bound parameter, allowing an authenticated pgAdmin user with a connected PostgreSQL session to inject additional statements through that endpoint. The injected SQL executes under the database role the user is already authenticated as. The defect does not cross a privilege boundary -- the user already has direct SQL access to that role through the Query Tool -- so the attacker gains no capability beyond what their database role already grants them. The marginal impact accounts for the fact that the injection path is not the documented SQL-execution interface, so a deployment that gates the Query Tool at the application layer could see SQL executed through a path it did not anticipate. Fix passes the restore point name as a bound parameter and schema-qualifies the function call as pg_catalog.pg_create_restore_point so a non-default search_path on the connection cannot redirect the call to a shadow definition. A regression test asserts the value arrives as a bound parameter and not spliced into the SQL string. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 1.0 before 9.16.
Source
f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007
NVD status
Analyzed
Products
pgadmin_4

Risk scores

CVSS 4.0

Type
Secondary
Base score
5.3
Impact score
-
Exploitability score
-
Vector string
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/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:X
Severity
MEDIUM

CVSS 3.1

Type
Primary
Base score
8.8
Impact score
5.9
Exploitability score
2.8
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity
HIGH

Weaknesses

f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007
CWE-89

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations

  1. Stored cross-site scripting in pgAdmin 4's error-rendering and plan-node-rendering paths. Text returned by a PostgreSQL server (ErrorResponse messages, including object names quoted back inside relation-does-not-exist errors and inside EXPLAIN Recheck Cond / Exact Heap Blocks fields) was passed verbatim through html-react-parser at every user-facing sink — the notifier toasts, FormFooterMessage / FormInput help and error areas, FormNote, ModalProvider AlertContent and confirmDelete, ToolErrorView, the Explain visualiser's NodeText panel, the SQL editor confirm dialogs, ConfirmSaveContent, PreferencesHelper modal alerts, and SelectThemes helper text. A PostgreSQL server an attacker controls — or any server returning attacker-influenced text such as a table or column name a low-privilege database user can create — could inject arbitrary HTML (including <iframe>) into the pgAdmin DOM the moment the victim's pgAdmin connected to that server or viewed an Explain plan that referenced the crafted object. The injected iframe's srcdoc could fetch attacker-served JavaScript and, by writing to parent.location, redirect the victim's top-level pgAdmin browser tab to an attacker-controlled URL. Because the injection originates from inside pgAdmin's own interface, standard anti-clickjacking controls (X-Frame-Options, Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors) do not mitigate it. A phishing page rendered inside the legitimate pgAdmin window is indistinguishable from a genuine pgAdmin dialog. Fix combines three complementary layers. (1) DOMPurify sanitisation is wrapped around every html-react-parser call site reachable from notifier, alert, form-error, Explain, and SQL-editor flows. (2) A new plain-text rendering contract — SafeMessage / SafeHtmlMessage components plus Notifier.errorText / alertText / warningText / infoText / successText helpers — is introduced; around fifty callers across browser, tools, dashboard, debugger, misc, llm, preferences, schema diff, and the SQL editor that previously interpolated backend-derived strings are migrated to the plain-text variants. (3) Backend HTML-escape is applied at the post-connection-SQL handler (execute_post_connection_sql) via a new sanitize_external_text helper, so third-party JSON consumers (audit logs, API clients) never receive raw markup either; the Explain plan-info renderer is also patched to _.escape Recheck Cond and Exact Heap Blocks at construction (matching every sibling field), giving defence in depth even before DOMPurify runs. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.0 before 9.16.CVE-2026-12048
  2. HTML injection in pgAdmin 4's cloud deployment module. The verify_credentials, deploy, regions, and update-server endpoints under /rds/, /azure/, /google/, and the top-level /cloud/ blueprint propagated AWS / Azure / Google SDK exception text — and the related file-resolution and database-commit exception text — into the JSON response body (the info and errormsg fields) without HTML-encoding. The Cloud Wizard frontend rendered these strings through html-react-parser, so an attacker-influenced exception message embedded structural HTML directly into the wizard's DOM. The reported entry point is /rds/verify_credentials/. An authenticated pgAdmin user submits a crafted access_key whose value contains an <iframe/src=...> payload; AWS STS rejects the credential with an IncompleteSignature exception whose text quotes the access_key verbatim; the pgAdmin backend forwards that text into the JSON info field; the Cloud Wizard's FormFooterMessage parses it as HTML. The browser fetches the iframe's src from an attacker-controlled host, and JavaScript executing inside the cross-origin iframe writes to parent.location, redirecting the victim's pgAdmin tab. Because the injection renders inside pgAdmin's own interface, X-Frame-Options and Content-Security-Policy frame-ancestors do not mitigate it. Baseline impact is self-targeted (the same user who supplied the payload sees the injection); escalation against other authenticated users requires an additional cross-site request-forgery primitive capable of submitting the malformed credential request with a valid X-pgA-CSRFToken in the victim's browser context. The same unsanitised-error-into-JSON pattern was present across multiple sibling endpoints — Azure's check_cluster_name_availability, every Google endpoint that surfaces SDK errors (verification_ack, projects, regions, instance_types, database_versions, the verify_credentials path-resolution branches), the central /deploy endpoint that bubbles str(e) from deploy_on_rds / deploy_on_azure / deploy_on_google, and update_cloud_server which surfaces the str(e) from a failing db.session.commit — all of which are now covered. Fix HTML-escapes every external/SDK exception string at the endpoint sink via a new shared sanitize_external_text helper (HTML escape with control-character strip), promoted out of the psycopg3 driver into web/pgadmin/utils/text_sanitize.py. The Cloud Wizard frontend additionally renders its FormFooterMessage in plain-text mode for backend-derived strings, so the value is never parsed as HTML even if a future sink forgets the escape. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.6 before 9.16.CVE-2026-12047
  3. Two state-mutating endpoints in pgAdmin 4's SQL Editor blueprint -- DELETE /sqleditor/close/<trans_id> and POST /sqleditor/initialize/sqleditor/update_connection/<sgid>/<sid>/<did> -- were the only routes in the module missing the @pga_login_required decorator. Both reach a pickle.loads sink on session['gridData'][<trans_id>]['command_obj']: the close endpoint via close_sqleditor_session(), and update_sqleditor_connection via check_transaction_status(). In server mode these endpoints were reachable without any authenticated pgAdmin session. The defect is a missing-authentication-on-critical-function (CWE-306) wrapper around a deserialization-of-untrusted-data sink (CWE-502). Exploiting it for remote code execution requires the attacker to also forge a server-side session file whose gridData entry contains a malicious pickle payload, which in turn requires both (a) knowledge of pgAdmin's Flask SECRET_KEY (no chain to leak it is described here -- the attacker must already possess it) and (b) write access to pgAdmin's sessions/ directory on the host. Neither precondition is granted by this defect on its own. When those preconditions are met from another channel (misconfigured deployment, prior compromise, leaked configuration), the missing auth gate is the final hop that turns an existing partial compromise into unauthenticated code execution in the pgAdmin process -- and, by extension, on the host under whatever account runs pgAdmin. Fix is a one-line @pga_login_required decorator on each of the two endpoints, matching the convention used by every other route in the module. The is_authenticated / MFA chain now runs before the trans_id is dereferenced, so an unauthenticated request is rejected before reaching the deserialization path. The defect is server-mode only. In DESKTOP mode pgAdmin's before_request hook re-authenticates DESKTOP_USER on every request, so no endpoint can be exercised in an unauthenticated state and no auth decorator (or its absence) is meaningful. The accompanying regression test mirrors the attacker's path -- harvests an X-pgA-CSRFToken from GET /login and replays it against both endpoints -- and self-skips outside server mode for that reason; it is wired into the existing server-mode CI workflow alongside the data-isolation tests. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.9 before 9.16.CVE-2026-12046
  4. Read-only transaction bypass in the pgAdmin 4 AI Assistant allows an attacker who can influence database content that the assistant reads to execute arbitrary SQL with the privileges of the pgAdmin user's database role. The AI Assistant's execute_sql_query tool runs LLM-generated SQL inside a BEGIN TRANSACTION READ ONLY wrapper to prevent data modification. The LLM-supplied query was forwarded to the database driver without restriction to a single statement or to read-only verbs, so a multi-statement payload beginning with COMMIT, END, ROLLBACK, or ABORT terminated the read-only transaction and ran subsequent statements in autocommit mode. The trailing ROLLBACK then had no effect. Delivery is via prompt injection: an attacker who can write content into any object the AI Assistant may inspect (a row, a column value, a comment) can cause the LLM to emit the multi-statement payload as a tool call. With ordinary write privileges on the pgAdmin user's role the attacker can perform unauthorised data modification. When the pgAdmin user's role is a PostgreSQL superuser or holds pg_execute_server_program, the chain extends to remote code execution on the database server host via COPY ... TO PROGRAM. Fix validates the LLM-supplied query up front: it must parse to exactly one non-empty / non-comment statement whose leading real token (after stripping whitespace, comments, and punctuation) is one of SELECT, WITH, EXPLAIN, SHOW, VALUES, or TABLE. Transaction-control verbs, DML, DDL, CALL, COPY, DO, SET/RESET, and everything else are rejected before any database work happens. PostgreSQL's READ ONLY mode continues to backstop data-modifying CTEs, EXPLAIN ANALYZE on writes, and volatile side effects. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 9.13 before 9.16.CVE-2026-12045