CVE-2026-44477

Critical · CVSS 9.9

CloudNativePG — Privilege escalation via RESET ROLE after SET ROLE demotion enabling COPY TO PROGRAM RCE

CVSS: 9.9; nvd
EPSS: —
KEV: No
Class: other; CWE-250, CWE-271, CWE-426, CWE-250

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.

Search profile — drives PoC discovery

Symbols SET ROLERESET ROLEpg_monitorsession_usercurrent_userCOPY ... TO PROGRAMpostgres superuserUnix socketmetrics exporterscrape session

Keywords CVE-2026-44477CloudNativePGGHSA-423p-g724-fr39RESET ROLE privilege escalationCOPY TO PROGRAM RCEpg_monitor SET ROLE bypassmetrics exporter postgres superusercloudnative-pg privilege escalationKubernetes PostgreSQL RCEcloudnative-pg 1.29.1 1.28.3

Versions: < 1.28.3, >= 1.29.0 < 1.29.1

References

Status: enriched · ingested 2026-06-30T06:00:22.000Z · profiled 2026-07-01T12:30:14.000Z