CVE-2026-116246: pgAdmin 4: Server passwords are left in pgAdmin's process environment

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-116246 is a high (CVSS 7.0) vulnerability in pgadmin.org pgadmin 4. EPSS estimates a 0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8.7% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 30-10-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.

Description

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.

• CWE-214Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive InformationA process is invoked with sensitive command-line arguments, environment variables, or other elements that can be seen by other processes on the operating system.
• CWE-526Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment VariableThe product uses an environment variable to store unencrypted sensitive information.