{"id":"CVE-2026-17566","title":"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","summary":"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…","severity":"critical","cvss":9.9,"cvssVector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H","cwe":["CWE-78","CWE-115"],"published":"2026-07-31","updated":"2026-08-01","source":"NVD","sourceUrl":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-17566","references":[{"url":"https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4/commit/1496fabe28c9f825f6bac0f0d000d9d3276322c3","label":"f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007"},{"url":"https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4/issues/10213","label":"f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007"}],"tags":["nvd","exploit-available"],"epss":0.00557,"epssPercentile":0.45008,"ingestedAt":"2026-08-02T00:16:16.245Z","exploits":{"github":1,"githubRepos":["https://github.com/HackSpeak/CVE-2026-17566"],"checkedAt":"2026-09-21T15:28:12.971Z"},"exploitAvailable":true,"slug":"CVE-2026-17566","body":"## Overview\n\npgAdmin 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.\n\n## Remediation\n\nRefer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.","depth":"abyssal","depthScore":67,"depthScoreParts":{"impact":54.5,"likelihood":0.1,"exploitation":12,"ransomware":0},"changes":[{"seq":4976,"id":"CVE-2026-17566","ts":1788887222846,"field":"exploit_available","old":"false","new":"true"},{"seq":3859,"id":"CVE-2026-17566","ts":1788886354997,"field":"exploit_available","old":"true","new":"false"},{"seq":2687,"id":"CVE-2026-17566","ts":1788883019861,"field":"exploit_available","old":"false","new":"true"},{"seq":1716,"id":"CVE-2026-17566","ts":1788882424679,"field":"exploit_available","old":"true","new":"false"},{"seq":822,"id":"CVE-2026-17566","ts":1788881857970,"field":"exploit_available","old":"false","new":"true"}]}