CVE-2026-6478

medium

Published 2026-05-14 · Modified 2026-05-18

CVSS v3

6.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

CVSS v2

—

VIR risk

6.5

Description

Covert timing channel in comparison of MD5-hashed password in PostgreSQL authentication allows an attacker to recover user credentials sufficient to authenticate. This does not affect scram-sha-256 passwords, the default in all supported releases. However, current databases may have MD5-hashed passwords originating in upgrades from PostgreSQL 13 or earlier. Versions before PostgreSQL 18.4, 17.10, 16.14, 15.18, and 14.23 are affected.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

75%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-6478

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-6478.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: f86ef6dc-4d3a-42ad-8f28-e6d5547a5007 — https://www.postgresql.org/support/security/CVE-2026-6478/

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
sles		affected
debian	forky	fixed	`18.4-1`
debian	sid	fixed	`18.4-1`
debian	bullseye	affected
debian	bookworm	fixed	`15.18-0+deb12u1`
debian	trixie	fixed	`17.10-0+deb13u1`

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
postgresql	postgresql	`{"endExcluding":"14.23"}`	`14.23`

References

CWEs

CWE-385

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.