Stored cross-site scripting in pgAdmin 4's error-rendering and plan-node-rendering paths. Text returned by a PostgreSQL server (ErrorResponse messages, including object names quoted back inside relation-does-not-exist errors and inside EXPLAIN Recheck Cond / Exact Heap Blocks fields) was passed verbatim through html-react-parser at every user-facing sink — the notifier toasts, FormFooterMessage / FormInput help and error areas, FormNote, ModalProvider AlertContent and confirmDelete, ToolErrorView, the Explain visualiser's NodeText panel, the SQL editor confirm dialogs, ConfirmSaveContent, PreferencesHelper modal alerts, and SelectThemes helper text. A PostgreSQL server an attacker controls — or any server returning attacker-influenced text such as a table or column name a low-privilege database user can create — could inject arbitrary HTML (including <iframe>) into the pgAdmin DOM the moment the victim's pgAdmin connected to that server or viewed an Explain plan that referenced the crafted object.
The injected iframe's srcdoc could fetch attacker-served JavaScript and, by writing to parent.location, redirect the victim's top-level pgAdmin browser tab to an attacker-controlled URL. Because the injection originates from inside pgAdmin's own interface, standard anti-clickjacking controls (X-Frame-Options, Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors) do not mitigate it. A phishing page rendered inside the legitimate pgAdmin window is indistinguishable from a genuine pgAdmin dialog.
Fix combines three complementary layers. (1) DOMPurify sanitisation is wrapped around every html-react-parser call site reachable from notifier, alert, form-error, Explain, and SQL-editor flows. (2) A new plain-text rendering contract — SafeMessage / SafeHtmlMessage components plus Notifier.errorText / alertText / warningText / infoText / successText helpers — is introduced; around fifty callers across browser, tools, dashboard, debugger, misc, llm, preferences, schema diff, and the SQL editor that previously interpolated backend-derived strings are migrated to the plain-text variants. (3) Backend HTML-escape is applied at the post-connection-SQL handler (executepostconnectionsql) via a new sanitizeexternaltext helper, so third-party JSON consumers (audit logs, API clients) never receive raw markup either; the Explain plan-info renderer is also patched to .escape Recheck Cond and Exact Heap Blocks at construction (matching every sibling field), giving defence in depth even before DOMPurify runs.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.0 before 9.16.
Open redirect in pgAdmin 4's multi-factor authentication flow. The MFA validate and register endpoints honoured the user-supplied 'next' query/form parameter without confirming the target pointed back inside pgAdmin, so an authenticated victim who clicked /mfa/validate?next=<external> -- a link typically delivered by phishing -- would be sent to an attacker-controlled host directly out of the trusted auth flow.
The defect is a trusted-domain redirect, not a privilege bypass: the attacker gains no read/write access to pgAdmin or the victim's database, but the redirect launders the attacker's destination through pgAdmin's URL, which raises the success rate of credential-phishing follow-on against the victim.
Fix introduces a same-origin issaferedirecturl helper and gates every MFA redirect that consumes user-supplied 'next' values through it. The helper allows only relative paths and absolute URLs whose scheme is http(s) and whose host matches the current request host; it rejects external hosts in absolute and protocol-relative form, non-http schemes (javascript:, data:, mailto:), userinfo tricks (http://localhost@attacker/), and backslash variants that some browsers normalize to forward slashes. Unsafe targets fall back to the internal browser index. A dedicated regression test exercises each accept/reject category and the original reporter PoC.
This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.0 before 9.16.