CVE-2026-116244
Received
Received - Intake
Kerberos Authentication Bypass in pgAdmin 4
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-116244, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-30
Last updated on: 2026-10-30
Assigner: PostgreSQL
Description
Description
When a pgAdmin 4 connection was not meant to use a Kerberos user's delegated credentials, pgAdmin removed KRB5CCNAME from its environment, so the Kerberos library fell back to the default credential cache, or a client keytab, of the operating-system account running pgAdmin. libpq then answered any server that asked for GSSAPI authentication with that account's ticket, whatever user name the pgAdmin user gave, so in server mode any user could connect as the service account's Kerberos principal; gssencmode=disable did not prevent it. On Windows, SSPI used the service account's logon in the same way. psql was also started with pgAdmin's environment, which could hold another user's credential cache while that user was connecting.
The fix points KRB5CCNAME and KRB5_CLIENT_KTNAME at a file that cannot exist except while a Kerberos-authenticated user connects with Kerberos, and gives every other connection, psql and the utilities require_auth=!gss,!sspi and gssencmode=disable, checked on the final connection string. require_auth needs libpq 16 or later.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: before 9.19.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| pgadmin.org | pgAdmin 4 | 0 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-1188 | The product initializes or sets a resource with a default that is intended to be changed by the product's installer, administrator, or maintainer, but the default is not secure. |
| CWE-522 | The product transmits or stores authentication credentials, but it uses an insecure method that is susceptible to unauthorized interception and/or retrieval. |
