Ashesh Vashi
4 exploits
Active since Jan 2025
pgAdmin 4: SQL injection in COMMENT ON ... IS '<description>' rendering across dialog templates
SQL injection in pgAdmin 4 across every dialog template that renders ``COMMENT ON ... IS '<description>'`` for a user-supplied description field. The Jinja templates for Domains (and their constraints), Foreign Tables, Languages, and Event Triggers, plus the Views OID-lookup query, interpolated the description directly inside a single-quoted SQL literal -- ``'{{ data.description }}'`` -- instead of passing it through the ``qtLiteral`` escape filter. An authenticated pgAdmin user with permission to create or alter the affected object types could submit a description containing an apostrophe, break out of the literal and chain arbitrary SQL. The injected SQL runs under the PostgreSQL role the user is already authenticated as; for a connected role with ``COPY ... TO/FROM PROGRAM`` (typically PostgreSQL superuser), this chains to OS command execution on the PostgreSQL host. The defect does not cross a privilege boundary -- the user already has direct SQL access to that role through pgAdmin's Query Tool -- so the attacker gains no capability beyond what their database role already grants. The marginal impact captures bypass of any application-layer Query Tool gating an operator may have configured.
The defect was originally reported against the Domain Dialog ``description`` field; a code-wide audit identified sixteen sites of the same pattern across the templates listed above. The same review also surfaced ten related sinks in the pgstattuple/pgstatindex stats templates -- ``pgstattuple('{{schema}}.{{table}}')`` and the matching pgstatindex shape -- where ``qtIdent`` escapes embedded double quotes inside the identifier but not apostrophes, so a user with CREATE privilege on a schema could plant a table or index named ``foo'bar`` and a later stats viewer would render an unbalanced literal.
Fix is layered:
1. Sites: replace every ``'{{ x.description }}'`` with ``{{ x.description|qtLiteral(conn) }}`` (no surrounding quotes -- the filter wraps the value in escaped quotes itself). Plumb ``conn=self.conn`` through every ``render_template`` call that loads one of these templates. Also corrects a ``{ % elif`` Jinja typo in the foreign-table schema diff (dead branch). Rewrite the ten pgstattuple/pgstatindex stats sites to address the relation via OID + ``::oid::regclass`` cast (e.g. ``pgstattuple({{ tid }}::oid::regclass)``), eliminating the embedded literal-call form entirely so that bug-class can no longer recur there.
2. Driver hardening: ``qtLiteral`` (in ``utils/driver/psycopg3/__init__.py``) used to silently return the raw unescaped value when its ``conn`` argument was falsy. It now raises ``ValueError`` -- surfacing the entire bug class going forward. The change immediately uncovered eight latent plumbing bugs (in ``schemas/__init__.py``, ``schemas/functions/__init__.py``, ``schemas/tables/utils.py``, ``foreign_servers/__init__.py``, and seven sites in ``roles/__init__.py``) -- all fixed as part of this patch. The inner ``except`` block that swallowed adapter-level failures and returned the raw value is also removed, so unadaptable inputs raise instead of leaking unescaped values.
3. Regression tests: a per-template behavioural test renders each previously-vulnerable template with an apostrophe-injection payload and asserts the escaped fragment is present and the vulnerable fragment absent; a lint test walks every ``*.sql`` template flagging any ``'{{ ... }}'`` single-quote-wrapped interpolation against an explicit allowlist; unit tests cover the new qtLiteral fail-fast and inner-except raise paths.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 1.0 before 9.16.
CVSS 8.8
pgAdmin 4: Unauthenticated pickle deserialization in SQL Editor close / update_connection routes enables remote code execution
Two state-mutating endpoints in pgAdmin 4's SQL Editor blueprint -- DELETE /sqleditor/close/<trans_id> and POST /sqleditor/initialize/sqleditor/update_connection/<sgid>/<sid>/<did> -- were the only routes in the module missing the @pga_login_required decorator. Both reach a pickle.loads sink on session['gridData'][<trans_id>]['command_obj']: the close endpoint via close_sqleditor_session(), and update_sqleditor_connection via check_transaction_status(). In server mode these endpoints were reachable without any authenticated pgAdmin session.
The defect is a missing-authentication-on-critical-function (CWE-306) wrapper around a deserialization-of-untrusted-data sink (CWE-502). Exploiting it for remote code execution requires the attacker to also forge a server-side session file whose gridData entry contains a malicious pickle payload, which in turn requires both (a) knowledge of pgAdmin's Flask SECRET_KEY (no chain to leak it is described here -- the attacker must already possess it) and (b) write access to pgAdmin's sessions/ directory on the host. Neither precondition is granted by this defect on its own. When those preconditions are met from another channel (misconfigured deployment, prior compromise, leaked configuration), the missing auth gate is the final hop that turns an existing partial compromise into unauthenticated code execution in the pgAdmin process -- and, by extension, on the host under whatever account runs pgAdmin.
Fix is a one-line @pga_login_required decorator on each of the two endpoints, matching the convention used by every other route in the module. The is_authenticated / MFA chain now runs before the trans_id is dereferenced, so an unauthenticated request is rejected before reaching the deserialization path.
The defect is server-mode only. In DESKTOP mode pgAdmin's before_request hook re-authenticates DESKTOP_USER on every request, so no endpoint can be exercised in an unauthenticated state and no auth decorator (or its absence) is meaningful. The accompanying regression test mirrors the attacker's path -- harvests an X-pgA-CSRFToken from GET /login and replays it against both endpoints -- and self-skips outside server mode for that reason; it is wired into the existing server-mode CI workflow alongside the data-isolation tests.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.9 before 9.16.
CVSS 9.0
pgAdmin 4: HTML injection in cloud verify_credentials / deploy endpoints via unsanitised SDK exception text
HTML injection in pgAdmin 4's cloud deployment module. The verify_credentials, deploy, regions, and update-server endpoints under /rds/, /azure/, /google/, and the top-level /cloud/ blueprint propagated AWS / Azure / Google SDK exception text — and the related file-resolution and database-commit exception text — into the JSON response body (the info and errormsg fields) without HTML-encoding. The Cloud Wizard frontend rendered these strings through html-react-parser, so an attacker-influenced exception message embedded structural HTML directly into the wizard's DOM.
The reported entry point is /rds/verify_credentials/. An authenticated pgAdmin user submits a crafted access_key whose value contains an <iframe/src=...> payload; AWS STS rejects the credential with an IncompleteSignature exception whose text quotes the access_key verbatim; the pgAdmin backend forwards that text into the JSON info field; the Cloud Wizard's FormFooterMessage parses it as HTML. The browser fetches the iframe's src from an attacker-controlled host, and JavaScript executing inside the cross-origin iframe writes to parent.location, redirecting the victim's pgAdmin tab. Because the injection renders inside pgAdmin's own interface, X-Frame-Options and Content-Security-Policy frame-ancestors do not mitigate it. Baseline impact is self-targeted (the same user who supplied the payload sees the injection); escalation against other authenticated users requires an additional cross-site request-forgery primitive capable of submitting the malformed credential request with a valid X-pgA-CSRFToken in the victim's browser context.
The same unsanitised-error-into-JSON pattern was present across multiple sibling endpoints — Azure's check_cluster_name_availability, every Google endpoint that surfaces SDK errors (verification_ack, projects, regions, instance_types, database_versions, the verify_credentials path-resolution branches), the central /deploy endpoint that bubbles str(e) from deploy_on_rds / deploy_on_azure / deploy_on_google, and update_cloud_server which surfaces the str(e) from a failing db.session.commit — all of which are now covered.
Fix HTML-escapes every external/SDK exception string at the endpoint sink via a new shared sanitize_external_text helper (HTML escape with control-character strip), promoted out of the psycopg3 driver into web/pgadmin/utils/text_sanitize.py. The Cloud Wizard frontend additionally renders its FormFooterMessage in plain-text mode for backend-derived strings, so the value is never parsed as HTML even if a future sink forgets the escape.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.6 before 9.16.
CVSS 3.5
pgAgent < 4.2.3 - Predictable Temporary Directory Name Generation
When batch jobs are executed by pgAgent, a script is created in a temporary directory and then executed. In versions of pgAgent prior to 4.2.3, an insufficiently seeded random number generator is used when generating the directory name, leading to the possibility for a local attacker to pre-create the directory and thus prevent pgAgent from executing jobs, disrupting scheduled tasks.
CVSS 5.5