CVE-2026-44477

CloudNativePG: Metrics exporter allows privilege escalation to PostgreSQL superuser and OS RCE

State
Published
Severity
9.4 Critical
Published
May 28, 2026
Updated
Jul 15, 2026
Reserved
May 6, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

CloudNativePG is a platform designed to manage PostgreSQL databases within Kubernetes environments. Prior to 1.29.1 and 1.28.3, the CloudNativePG metrics exporter opens its PostgreSQL connection as the postgres superuser via the pod-local Unix socket, then demotes the session with SET ROLE pg_monitor. SET ROLE changes only current_user; session_user remains postgres. Any SQL expression evaluated inside the scrape session can invoke RESET ROLE to recover real superuser privileges, then use COPY ... TO PROGRAM to spawn an OS-level subprocess as the postgres user inside the primary pod. The READ ONLY transaction flag does not block this; it gates writes to database state, not external processes. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.29.1 and 1.28.3.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
4.09.4 CriticalCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:HGitHub_M
3.18.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:Hredhat-SADP

Weaknesses

  • CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
  • CWE-271 Privilege Dropping / Lowering Errors
  • CWE-426 Untrusted Search Path

Affected Products

ProductVersions
cloudnative-pgcloudnative-pg
  • < 1.28.3Affected
  • >= 1.29.0, < 1.29.1Affected

References

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