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CVE-2026-17566: CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') in pgadmin.org pgAdmin 4

0
Critical
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-17566cvecve-2026-17566cwe-78cwe-115
Published: 07/31/2026 (07/31/2026, 16:00:22 UTC)
Source: CVE Database V5
Vendor/Project: pgadmin.org
Product: pgAdmin 4

Description

pgAdmin 4's Import/Export Data tool builds a psql \copy (...) command line by interpolating a user-supplied SQL query into a Jinja template and passing the rendered line to psql via --command. To stop an attacker from breaking out of the (...) wrapper, create_import_export_job() (route POST /import_export/job/<sid>, gated only by the ordinary, commonly-granted tools_import_export_data permission) validated the query with a hand-written parenthesis-balance checker, _is_query_parens_balanced(). That checker always treated a backslash before a single quote (\') as escaping the quote, i.e. as if standard_conforming_strings were off. PostgreSQL has defaulted standard_conforming_strings to on since 9.1 (2010), the default on every PostgreSQL version pgAdmin 4 currently supports (13-18); under that default psql's own \copy tokenizer treats \ as an ordinary character, so a single quote immediately after it closes the string literal. A query such as SELECT 'a\') TO PROGRAM 'echo pwned' x' was therefore accepted as "balanced" by pgAdmin's checker (which believed the ) was still inside the string), while psql, run through the actual rendered command line, closes the string at that point and treats the following ) as the end of the wrapping \copy (...) subquery, exposing an attacker-chosen TO PROGRAM '<command>' clause that psql executes via popen() -- independent of a subsequent syntax error later on the same line. This is the same class of bug as CVE-2025-12762/CVE-2025-13780 (RCE via psql meta-command/COPY injection during PLAIN-format dump restore), reached through an independently written defense in a different module (Import/Export Data rather than Restore) that had its own, different logic bug (inverted backslash-escape semantics rather than a BOM-defeated regex anchor). The fix rejects any backslash inside a single-quoted string in the query outright, rather than picking one of the two possible psql interpretations. This is intentionally conservative: because the correct interpretation of \ depends on the target server's standard_conforming_strings setting, which the checker cannot reliably know at validation time, refusing the query is safer than guessing. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from the introduction of _is_query_parens_balanced() before 9.18.

CVSS v3.1

Score 9.9critical

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected software

GitHub Actionsmore threats →cve
pgAdmin 4
pkg:github/pgAdmin 4
Affected versions
<9.18

Run on your own infrastructure? Check whether these packages are installed with threat-finder — our free open-source scanner.

Technical Details

Data Version
5.2
Assigner Short Name
PostgreSQL
Date Reserved
2026-07-27T14:43:12.802Z
Cvss Version
3.1
State
PUBLISHED
Remediation Level
null

Threat ID: 6a6cf74ebf32cb7a34294bc7

Added to database: 07/31/2026, 19:28:14 UTC

Last updated: 07/31/2026, 19:28:14 UTC

Views: 1

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