Read-only transaction bypass in the pgAdmin 4 AI Assistant allows an attacker who can influence database content that the assistant reads to execute arbitrary SQL with the privileges of the pgAdmin user's database role. The AI Assistant's execute_sql_query tool runs LLM-generated SQL inside a BEGIN TRANSACTION READ ONLY wrapper to prevent data modification. The LLM-supplied query was forwarded to the database driver without restriction to a single statement or to read-only verbs, so a multi-statement payload beginning with COMMIT, END, ROLLBACK, or ABORT terminated the read-only transaction and ran subsequent statements in autocommit mode. The trailing ROLLBACK then had no effect. Delivery is via prompt injection: an attacker who can write content into any object the AI Assistant may inspect (a row, a column value, a comment) can cause the LLM to emit the multi-statement payload as a tool call. With ordinary write privileges on the pgAdmin user's role the attacker can perform unauthorised data modification. When the pgAdmin user's role is a PostgreSQL superuser or holds pg_execute_server_program, the chain extends to remote code execution on the database server host via COPY ... TO PROGRAM. Fix validates the LLM-supplied query up front: it must parse to exactly one non-empty / non-comment statement whose leading real token (after stripping whitespace, comments, and punctuation) is one of SELECT, WITH, EXPLAIN, SHOW, VALUES, or TABLE. Transaction-control verbs, DML, DDL, CALL, COPY, DO, SET/RESET, and everything else are rejected before any database work happens. PostgreSQL's READ ONLY mode continues to backstop data-modifying CTEs, EXPLAIN ANALYZE on writes, and volatile side effects. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 9.13 before 9.16.
| Métrique | Valeur | Interprétation |
|---|---|---|
|
AV (Vecteur d'Attaque)
Attack Vector
|
Network (N)
|
Exploit possible à distance via réseau (HTTP, API, etc.) |
|
AC (Complexité d'Attaque)
Attack Complexity
|
Low (L)
|
Peu de conditions requises pour exploiter |
|
PR (Privilèges Requis)
Privileges Required
|
Low (L)
|
Authentifié avec compte utilisateur basique |
|
UI (Interaction Utilisateur)
User Interaction
|
Unknown (P)
|
Interaction inconnue |
|
S (Périmètre)
Scope
|
Unchanged (U)
|
Impact reste dans le périmètre du composant compromis |
|
C (Impact Confidentialité)
Confidentiality Impact
|
High (H)
|
Divulgation totale d'informations |
|
I (Impact Intégrité)
Integrity Impact
|
High (H)
|
Modification totale des données possible |
|
A (Impact Disponibilité)
Availability Impact
|
High (H)
|
Interruption totale du service possible |
pgAdmin 4: AI Assistant read-only transaction bypass allows unauthorised writes and remote code execution