Medium severity · published Sep 23, 2026
CVE-2026-6669
Unbounded SCRAM iteration count causes CPU exhaustion in PgBouncer
5.9
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Missing upper bound on the key derivation iteration count accepted during SCRAM authentication to a backend server in PgBouncer through 1.25.2 allows a malicious or compromised PostgreSQL backend to cause uncontrolled CPU consumption in PgBouncer. The resulting key derivation cannot be interrupted in frontend builds such as PgBouncer. Because PgBouncer serves all clients from a single process, one backend can in this way stop it from serving traffic for every other database and client it is pooling, so the failure of a single backend is not contained.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 36% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
PG
PgBouncer ·
through 1.25.2 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-6669
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-6669
www.pgbouncer.org
https://www.pgbouncer.org/changelog.html
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