Security Vulnerabilities
pgAdmin 4's Restore and Maintenance tools passed the client-supplied 'database' field directly as the value of the --dbname option given to pg_restore and psql. libpq expands a database name containing an equals sign into a full connection string, and connection keywords embedded in that value take precedence over the --host and --port arguments that pgAdmin supplies. A value such as 'host=attacker.example port=5432 dbname=x' therefore redirected the utility to a server chosen by the requesting user rather than the server the operation was invoked against. Because pgAdmin exports the decrypted stored database password in the PGPASSWORD environment variable before executing the utility, the redirected connection presents that credential to the attacker-nominated endpoint, which may capture it. The redirection additionally permits outbound connections from the pgAdmin host to arbitrary network addresses, including hosts not otherwise reachable by the requesting user.
The behaviour is reachable by any authenticated user holding the tools_restore or tools_maintenance permission, both of which the default User role grants. The Maintenance tool was not affected in the earliest releases, where the value was wrapped by a quoting helper that incidentally prevented expansion; it became affected when that wrapper was removed.
The fix supplies the target database in the PGDATABASE environment variable, which libpq treats as a literal database name and never expands as a connection string. Where pg_restore requires a --dbname argument to be present, an empty value is passed, which contains no equals sign and is therefore not expanded, while the real name is taken from the environment.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from the introduction of the --dbname argument in the Restore and Maintenance tools before 9.18.
CVSS Score
7.1
EPSS Score
0.004
Published
2026-09-17
pgAdmin 4's Webserver authentication source is intended to accept an identity asserted by the web server or reverse proxy in front of pgAdmin, delivered through the WSGI/CGI environment. WebserverAuthentication.get_user() read config.WEBSERVER_REMOTE_USER from request.environ and, when that returned nothing, fell back to reading the same name directly from the inbound HTTP request headers via request.headers.get(). An inbound HTTP header is written by whoever sends the request, so any client able to reach pgAdmin could supply that header itself and be authenticated as any username it named, including an existing Administrator, without presenting a password or any other credential. The environment lookup could also be satisfied by a client-supplied header whenever WEBSERVER_REMOTE_USER was configured to an HTTP_-prefixed or hyphenated name such as HTTP_X_FORWARDED_USER or X-Forwarded-User, since WSGI servers place inbound headers into the environment under exactly those names. Deployments are affected only when 'webserver' is enabled in AUTHENTICATION_SOURCES.
The fix distinguishes a genuine CGI/WSGI variable from a header-derived one and implicitly trusts only the former. A header-asserted identity is now accepted only when the operator explicitly opts in via WEBSERVER_REMOTE_USER_FROM_HEADER, the request arrives from a peer listed in WEBSERVER_TRUSTED_PROXIES, and, when configured, a shared secret supplied in WEBSERVER_SHARED_SECRET_HEADER matches WEBSERVER_SHARED_SECRET under a constant-time comparison. The trusted-peer check deliberately reads the real socket peer address rather than request.remote_addr, because ProxyFix rewrites the latter from the client-controlled X-Forwarded-For header and would otherwise allow an attacker to claim to be the trusted proxy. As defence in depth, login() now refuses any account whose auth_source is not 'webserver', so a misconfigured trust gate cannot be used to assume an internal or LDAP account.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.2 before 9.18.
CVSS Score
9.3
EPSS Score
0.006
Published
2026-09-17
Transient DOS when processing large or numerous request buffers without sufficient memory allocation validation.
CVSS Score
7.4
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Transient DOS when processing unverified data from a neighboring system causes out of bound memory access.
CVSS Score
7.9
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Memory Corruption when copying unverified data from an external source exceeds the allocated buffer size.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Information Disclosure when a pointer is reused after being deallocated.
CVSS Score
7.3
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Memory Corruption when validating large data buffers from external sources using addition to check buffer length.
CVSS Score
7.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Transient DOS while parsing frame during channel usage.
CVSS Score
7.4
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Memory Corruption when multiple threads issue concurrent IOCTL requests to the device control handler due to improper synchronization and race conditions.
CVSS Score
7.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17
Transient DOS when processing a channel map with insufficient used channels and adaptive frequency hopping is fully enabled.
CVSS Score
7.4
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-09-17