High severity · published May 11, 2026
CVE-2026-7818
pgAdmin 4: Unsafe deserialization (CWE-502) in file-backed session manager leads to remote code execution
7.8
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Deserialization of untrusted data (CWE-502) in pgAdmin 4 FileBackedSessionManager.
The session manager performed unsafe deserialization of session-file contents (using Python's standard object-serialization module) before performing any HMAC integrity check. Any file dropped into the sessions directory was deserialized unconditionally. An authenticated user with write access to the sessions directory (whether by misconfiguration or in combination with another path-traversal flaw) could plant a crafted serialized payload to achieve operating-system level remote code execution under the pgAdmin process identity.
Fix prepends a 64-byte hex SHA-256 HMAC over the session body, computed with SECRET_KEY, and verifies it via hmac.compare_digest before any deserialization. The check is raised (rather than asserted) on empty SECRET_KEY so it is not stripped under -O.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: before 9.15.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 3% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
P4
pgAdmin 4 · pgadmin.org
before 9.15 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-7818
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-7818
Issue Tracking
https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4/issues/9901
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