9.4 CRITICAL
- CVSS version (CVSS): 4.0
- Attack Vector (AV): Network (N)
- Attack Complexity (AC): Low (L)
- Attack Requirement (AT): None (N)
- Privileges Required (PR): Low (L)
- User Interaction (UI): Passive (P)
- Vulnerable System Impact Confidentiality (VC): High (H)
- Vulnerable System Impact Integrity (VI): High (H)
- Vulnerable System Impact Availability (VA): High (H)
- Subsequent System Impact Confidentiality (SC): High (H)
- Subsequent System Impact Integrity (SI): High (H)
- Subsequent System Impact Availability (SA): High (H)
- Modified Attack Vector (MAV): Network (N)
- Modified Attack Complexity (MAC): Low (L)
- Modified Attack Requirement (MAT): None (N)
- Modified Privileges Required (MPR): Low (L)
- Modified User Interaction (MUI): Passive (P)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Confidentiality (MVC): High (H)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Integrity (MVI): High (H)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Availability (MVA): High (H)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Confidentiality (MSC): High (H)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Integrity (MSI): High (H)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Availability (MSA): High (H)
- Safety (S): Not Defined (X)
- Automatable (AU): Not Defined (X)
- Recovery (R): Not Defined (X)
- Value Density (V): Not Defined (X)
- Vulnerability Response Effort (RE): Not Defined (X)
- Provider Urgency (U): Not Defined (X)
- Confidentiality Req. (CR): Not Defined (X)
- Integrity Req. (IR): Not Defined (X)
- Availability Req. (AR): Not Defined (X)
- Exploit Maturity (E): Not Defined (X)
Activity log
- Created & dismissed (no matching packages found) suggestion
pgAdmin 4: AI Assistant read-only transaction bypass via sqlparse/PostgreSQL lexer disagreement (incomplete fix for CVE-2026-12045)
The fix for CVE-2026-12045 in pgAdmin 4 9.16 required the LLM-supplied query passed to the AI Assistant's execute_sql_query tool to parse, via sqlparse, as exactly one non-transaction-control statement before running it inside a BEGIN TRANSACTION READ ONLY wrapper. sqlparse's string-literal lexing can disagree with PostgreSQL's own parser: under standard_conforming_strings = on (PostgreSQL's default since 9.1), a backslash immediately before a quote is an ordinary character to PostgreSQL, but sqlparse treats it as escaping the quote. A payload such as SELECT '\';COMMIT;CREATE TABLE pwn(x int);SELECT 1 --' therefore parses as a single SELECT to sqlparse's validator, while PostgreSQL executes it as four statements: the smuggled COMMIT ends the wrapping read-only transaction, and the trailing ROLLBACK becomes a no-op. This reintroduces the same write/RCE bypass CVE-2026-12045 was meant to close, reachable via the same indirect prompt-injection delivery (an attacker plants the payload in any object the AI Assistant may read; the LLM emits it as a tool call). An initial candidate fix ran the query with psycopg's execute(..., prepare=True), intending to force PostgreSQL's own Parse step (extended query protocol) to reject multi-statement text regardless of sqlparse's classification. This candidate fix does not work as submitted: psycopg3's PrepareManager silently ignores the prepare argument whenever the connection's prepare_threshold is None, which is pgAdmin's default for every server connection (the per-server "Prepare threshold" field is blank unless an administrator explicitly sets it) -- psycopg3 falls back to the simple query protocol, the same multi-statement-capable path the bypass exploits, so the candidate fix closes nothing on any real-world default configuration. The corrected fix sets conn.prepare_threshold = 0 directly on the dedicated, single-use read-only connection the AI Assistant tool opens, structurally forcing the extended query protocol independent of any server-level configuration. Verified against a live PostgreSQL 18 instance: the payload executes successfully under the prepare_threshold=None (default) behavior, and is rejected with "cannot insert multiple commands into a prepared statement" once prepare_threshold=0 is set on that connection. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 9.13 before 9.17.
References
Affected products
- <9.17