pgAdmin up to 9.18 SSH Tunnel privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in pgAdmin up to 9.18. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the component SSH Tunnel. The manipulation leads to privileges management. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-116242. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in pgAdmin up to 9.18 and classified as critical. This issue affects an unknown code of the component SSH Tunnel. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

pgAdmin 4 opens SSH tunnels with the sshtunnel library but gave it neither host_pkey_directories nor ssh_config_file, so it always loaded the unencrypted private keys in ~/.ssh of the operating-system account running pgAdmin, read that account's ~/.ssh/config (IdentityFile, User, HostName, ProxyCommand) for the tunnel host, and could use its ssh-agent. In server mode any user could therefore configure a tunnel to a host that accepts the service account's key, with no credentials of their own or with an identity file that did not exist in their storage, and reach it as that account. The fix makes tunnels in server mode use only the identity file or password the user configured: the service account's keys, configuration and agent are no longer used, and an identity file that cannot be found in the user's storage is reported instead of falling back to ~/.ssh. Desktop mode is unchanged. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: before 9.19.

The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-116242 since 10/25/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1068 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 9.19 eliminates this vulnerability.

Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Name

• pgAdmin

Version

• 9.0
• 9.1
• 9.2
• 9.3
• 9.4
• 9.5
• 9.6
• 9.7
• 9.8
• 9.9
• 9.10
• 9.11
• 9.12
• 9.13
• 9.14
• 9.15
• 9.16
• 9.17
• 9.18

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

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Entryinfo

Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

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