{"basis":"claimed","id":"CVE-2026-17566","name":"pgAdmin 4: RCE via backslash-escape mismatch in Import/Export Data query guard (incomplete defense, sibling gap to CVE-2025-13780)","vendorProject":"pgadmin.org","product":"pgAdmin 4","publishedAt":"2026-07-31","cvss":{"score":9.4,"severity":"CRITICAL","version":"4.0"},"exploited":null,"epss":{"score":0.00673,"percentile":0.5212,"date":"2026-11-02"},"coverage":{"cloudflare":{"status":"none","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null},"aws":{"status":"none","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null},"azure":{"status":"none","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null},"google":{"status":"none","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null},"fastly":{"status":"no_history","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null},"f5":{"status":"rule","firstOn":"2026-09-16","daysToRule":47},"akamai":{"status":"no_source","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null},"crs":{"status":"none","firstOn":null,"daysToRule":null}},"title":"pgAdmin 4: RCE via backslash-escape mismatch in Import/Export Data query guard (incomplete defense, sibling gap to CVE-2025-13780)","description":"pgAdmin 4's Import/Export Data tool builds a psql \\copy (...) command line by interpolating a user-supplied SQL query into a Jinja template and passing the rendered line to psql via --command. To stop an attacker from breaking out of the (...) wrapper, create_import_export_job() (route POST /import_export/job/<sid>, gated only by the ordinary, commonly-granted tools_import_export_data permission) validated the query with a hand-written parenthesis-balance checker, _is_query_parens_balanced(). That checker always treated a backslash before a single quote (\\') as escaping the quote, i.e. as if standard_conforming_strings were off. PostgreSQL has defaulted standard_conforming_strings to on since 9.1 (2010), the default on every PostgreSQL version pgAdmin 4 currently supports (13-18); under that default psql's own \\copy tokenizer treats \\ as an ordinary character, so a single quote immediately after it closes the string literal. A query such as SELECT 'a\\') TO PROGRAM 'echo pwned' x' was therefore accepted as \"balanced\" by pgAdmin's checker (which believed the ) was still inside the string), while psql, run through the actual rendered command line, closes the string at that point and treats the following ) as the end of the wrapping \\copy (...) subquery, exposing an attacker-chosen TO PROGRAM '<command>' clause that psql executes via popen() -- independent of a subsequent syntax error later on the same line. This is the same class of bug as CVE-2025-12762/CVE-2025-13780 (RCE via psql meta-command/COPY injection during PLAIN-format dump restore), reached through an independently written defense in a different module (Import/Export Data rather than Restore) that had its own, different logic bug (inverted backslash-escape semantics rather than a BOM-defeated regex anchor).\n\nThe fix rejects any backslash inside a single-quoted string in the query outright, rather than picking one of the two possible psql interpretations. This is intentionally conservative: because the correct interpretation of \\ depends on the target server's standard_conforming_strings setting, which the checker cannot reliably know at validation time, refusing the query is safer than guessing.\n\nThis issue affects pgAdmin 4: from the introduction of _is_query_parens_balanced() before 9.18.","cwes":["CWE-78","CWE-115"],"vendors":[{"vendor":"cloudflare","status":"none","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]},{"vendor":"aws","status":"none","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]},{"vendor":"azure","status":"none","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]},{"vendor":"google","status":"none","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]},{"vendor":"fastly","status":"no_history","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]},{"vendor":"f5","status":"rule","basis":"claimed","firstOn":"2026-09-16","firstIsNew":true,"daysToRule":47,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[{"id":"a50e8ec72331091262a725b45e10e4c557c0cde7f7d8f0c8b9d0807ba7e2212d","cve_id":"CVE-2026-17566","vendor":"f5","product":"Attack signatures","rule_id":"200103692","rule_name":"pgAdmin Remote Command Execution (2)","change":"new","default_action":null,"published_on":"2026-09-16","source_url":"https://docs.cloud.f5.com/docs-v2/platform/changelogs/security-details-changelog","source_title":"F5 Distributed Cloud attack signatures changelog","excerpt":"Added: signature 200103692 \"pgAdmin Remote Command Execution (2)\" (Command Execution, risk High), systems: Other Web Server. References: CVE-2026-17566.","first_seen_at":"2026-11-02T21:00:24.509Z"}]},{"vendor":"akamai","status":"no_source","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]},{"vendor":"crs","status":"none","basis":"claimed","firstOn":null,"firstIsNew":false,"daysToRule":null,"daysAtMost":null,"freePlan":false,"claims":[]}],"updatedAt":"2026-11-02T21:17:16.726Z","cvssVector":"CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H","ssvc":{"exploitation":"none","automatable":"no","technicalImpact":"total"},"measured":[],"social":{"total":0,"first_seen":null,"daily":[{"day":"2026-10-21","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-22","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-23","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-24","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-25","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-26","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-27","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-28","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-29","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-30","posts":0},{"day":"2026-10-31","posts":0},{"day":"2026-11-01","posts":0},{"day":"2026-11-02","posts":0},{"day":"2026-11-03","posts":0}],"top_posts":[],"exploit_repositories":[]}}