pgadmin.org pgAdmin 4 up to 9.18 Environment Variable access control

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in pgadmin.org pgAdmin 4 up to 9.18. This affects an unknown function of the component Environment Variable Handler. Executing a manipulation can lead to access control. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-116246. The attack can be launched remotely. No exploit exists. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in pgadmin.org pgAdmin 4 up to 9.18. This vulnerability affects some unknown functionality of the component Environment Variable Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a access control vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-284. The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

To pass a server's password to psql and to the utilities pgAdmin 4 runs as background processes, the server manager wrote it into pgAdmin's own process environment: as PGPASSWORD for the PSQL tool, and under a per-process variable for a utility. Nothing removed it afterwards. pgAdmin's environment is shared by every user's requests and copied into every process it starts, so in server mode another user's later PSQL session or utility inherited the password, and libpq used PGPASSWORD for any connection made without a password of its own, letting one user connect with another user's saved password. The fix puts the password only into the environment built for the process that needs it and starts psql with a copy of pgAdmin's environment instead of the environment itself. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: before 9.19.

The advisory is available at github.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-116246 since 10/25/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be initiated remotely. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not available. This vulnerability is assigned to T1068 by the MITRE ATT&CK project.

Upgrading to version 9.19 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• pgadmin.org

Name

• pgAdmin 4

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

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CPE 2.2info

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