GHSA-F649-FJV9-QGCG

Vulnerability from github – Published: 2026-07-31 18:32 – Updated: 2026-07-31 18:32
VLAI
Details

The MASTER_PASSWORD_HOOK setting, introduced in pgAdmin 4 7.2, lets an administrator configure an external command that returns a per-user encryption key, with %u in the configured string replaced by the current user's name. The previous implementation substituted the username directly into the command string and executed the result with subprocess.Popen(..., shell=True). Because the username can originate from an external authentication source (OAuth/OIDC claims, Kerberos, webserver auth) rather than a value pgAdmin fully controls, a username containing shell metacharacters (';', '$()', backticks, pipes, '&&', newlines) allowed an authenticated user to execute arbitrary commands as the pgAdmin service account in any deployment where the configured hook string uses %u.

Fix tokenises the trusted, administrator-configured hook string into an argument vector first (using shlex in POSIX-quoting mode, with backslash-escaping disabled so Windows-style paths are not mis-parsed), substitutes the untrusted username into the individual argv elements, and executes with shell=False. The username is therefore always confined to a single argv element; any shell metacharacters it contains are inert. Administrators whose MASTER_PASSWORD_HOOK previously relied on shell features (pipes, redirection, environment-variable expansion, globbing) within the hook string itself must move that logic into the invoked script, since it is no longer interpreted by a shell.

This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 7.2 before 9.17.

Severity
7.5 (High)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
7.7 (High)
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
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{
  "affected": [],
  "aliases": [
    "CVE-2026-17347"
  ],
  "database_specific": {
    "cwe_ids": [
      "CWE-78"
    ],
    "github_reviewed": false,
    "github_reviewed_at": null,
    "nvd_published_at": "2026-07-31T16:16:59Z",
    "severity": "HIGH"
  },
  "details": "The MASTER_PASSWORD_HOOK setting, introduced in pgAdmin 4 7.2, lets an administrator configure an external command that returns a per-user encryption key, with %u in the configured string replaced by the current user\u0027s name. The previous implementation substituted the username directly into the command string and executed the result with subprocess.Popen(..., shell=True). Because the username can originate from an external authentication source (OAuth/OIDC claims, Kerberos, webserver auth) rather than a value pgAdmin fully controls, a username containing shell metacharacters (\u0027;\u0027, \u0027$()\u0027, backticks, pipes, \u0027\u0026\u0026\u0027, newlines) allowed an authenticated user to execute arbitrary commands as the pgAdmin service account in any deployment where the configured hook string uses %u.\n\nFix tokenises the trusted, administrator-configured hook string into an argument vector first (using shlex in POSIX-quoting mode, with backslash-escaping disabled so Windows-style paths are not mis-parsed), substitutes the untrusted username into the individual argv elements, and executes with shell=False. The username is therefore always confined to a single argv element; any shell metacharacters it contains are inert. Administrators whose MASTER_PASSWORD_HOOK previously relied on shell features (pipes, redirection, environment-variable expansion, globbing) within the hook string itself must move that logic into the invoked script, since it is no longer interpreted by a shell.\n\nThis issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 7.2 before 9.17.",
  "id": "GHSA-f649-fjv9-qgcg",
  "modified": "2026-07-31T18:32:17Z",
  "published": "2026-07-31T18:32:17Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "ADVISORY",
      "url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-17347"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4/issues/10191"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4/commit/e7a85767314e7b0fe0b35fe80b9c1af38f48dff6"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4/commit/ea7e798aac27174d2bacee1d6e136bed76a95e23"
    }
  ],
  "schema_version": "1.4.0",
  "severity": [
    {
      "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H",
      "type": "CVSS_V3"
    },
    {
      "score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/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",
      "type": "CVSS_V4"
    }
  ]
}



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