GHSA-3v6v-2x6p-32mc CVE-2022-4223 PYSEC-2026-893
pgadmin4 vulnerable to Code Injection
High
PyPI
- Severity
- 8.8 / 10
- High · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 80.07%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 99.62% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-862 Missing Authorization
- CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
- Fix
6.17- Upgrade pgadmin4 to this version or later
Description
The pgAdmin server includes an HTTP API that is intended to be used to validate the path a user selects to external PostgreSQL utilities such as pg_dump and pg_restore. The utility is executed by the server to determine what PostgreSQL version it is from. Versions of pgAdmin prior to 6.17 failed to properly secure this API, which could allow an unauthenticated user to call it with a path of their choosing, such as a UNC path to a server they control on a Windows machine. This would cause an appropriately named executable in the target path to be executed by the pgAdmin server.
Affected versions
PyPI
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| pgadmin4 | < 6.17 |
6.17 |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
pgadmin4 PyPI → 6.17
- pip
pip install --upgrade "pgadmin4>=6.17"- poetry
poetry add "pgadmin4>=6.17"- uv
uv add "pgadmin4>=6.17"
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 8.8
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-862: Missing Authorization
The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) [REF-229] to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries. Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that access control checks are performed related to the business logic. These checks may be different than the access control checks that are applied to more generic resources such as files, connections, processes, memory, and database records. For example, a database may restrict access for medical records to a specific database user, but each record might only be intended to be accessible to the patient and the patient's doctor [REF-7].
- Architecture and Design: Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. For example, consider using authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
- Architecture and Design: For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page. One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has the required permissions to access that page.
- System Configuration, Installation: Use the access control capabilities of your operating system and server environment and define your access control lists accordingly. Use a "default deny" policy when defining these ACLs.
CWE-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
The product constructs all or part of a code segment using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the syntax or behavior of the intended code segment.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Refactor your program so that you do not have to dynamically generate code.
- Architecture and Design: Run your code in a "jail" or similar sandbox environment that enforces strict boundaries between the process and the operating system. This may effectively restrict which code can be executed by your product. Examples include the Unix chroot jail and AppArmor. In general, managed code may provide some protection. This may not be a feasible solution, and it only limits the impact to the operating system; the rest of your application may still be subject to compromise. Be careful to avoid CWE-243 and other weaknesses related to jails.
- Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright. To reduce the likelihood of code injection, use stringent allowlists that limit which constructs are allowed. If you are dynamically constructing code that invokes a function, then verifying that the input is alphanumeric might be insufficient. An attacker might still be able to reference a dangerous function that you did not intend to allow, such as system(), exec(), or exit().
- Testing: Use dynamic tools and techniques that interact with the product using large test suites with many diverse inputs, such as fuzz testing (fuzzing), robustness testing, and fault injection. The product's operation may slow down, but it should not become unstable, crash, or generate incorrect results.
- Operation: Run the code in an environment that performs automatic taint propagation and prevents any command execution that uses tainted variables, such as Perl's "-T" switch. This will force the program to perform validation steps that remove the taint, although you must be careful to correctly validate your inputs so that you do not accidentally mark dangerous inputs as untainted (see CWE-183 and CWE-184).
- Operation: Run the code in an environment that performs automatic taint propagation and prevents any command execution that uses tainted variables, such as Perl's "-T" switch. This will force the program to perform validation steps that remove the taint, although you must be careful to correctly validate your inputs so that you do not accidentally mark dangerous inputs as untainted (see CWE-183 and CWE-184).
- Implementation: For Python programs, it is frequently encouraged to use the ast.literal_eval() function instead of eval, since it is intentionally designed to avoid executing code. However, an adversary could still cause excessive memory or stack consumption via deeply nested structures [REF-1372], so the python documentation discourages use of ast.literal_eval() on untrusted data [REF-1373].
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-hv9p-2pqf-r5w3 pgAdmin 4: Improper restriction of excessive authentication attempts | Medium | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-hr4r-fwpv-c95j pgAdmin 4 File Manager has symbolic-link path traversal | High | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-4rhg-h8f2-v4jm pgAdmin 4 has deserialization of untrusted data in its FileBackedSessionManager | High | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-p58c-q354-6c4f pgAdmin 4 contains local file inclusion (LFI) and server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities | Medium | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-j74f-g7vx-fh4x pgAdmin 4: OS command injection vulnerability in Import/Export query export | High | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-hp84-p2gq-6fvr SQL injection vulnerability in pgAdmin 4 Maintenance Tool | High | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-6p2c-69cv-3fxq pgAdmin 4: Stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Browser Tree and Explain Visualizer modules | Medium | Also affects pgadmin4 |
| GHSA-h2x2-q2mc-24gw pgAdmin 4 server mode has an authorization vulnerability affecting Server Groups, Servers, Shared Servers, Background Processes, and Debugger modules | Critical | Also affects pgadmin4 |
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