CVE-2026-92868
Description
A flaw was found in Pgpool-II due to improper certificate validation. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this issue to bypass client certificate authentication mechanisms. Successful exploitation may allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to the database proxy service.
Statement
Red Hat Product Security rates this vulnerability as Moderate severity because exploitation requires an environment specifically configured to authenticate users via client certificates, rather than standard password-based mechanisms. Within Red Hat ecosystems, Pgpool-II is not shipped in core Red Hat Enterprise Linux repositories and is maintained only in community Fedora channels. While bypassing certificate checks allows unauthorized network connections to reach the proxy, underlying backend database access controls still limit exposure.
Mitigation
To mitigate this vulnerability, restrict network reachability to the Pgpool-II daemon using firewalld and configure password-based authentication instead of client certificate verification in pool_hba.conf.
1. Restrict incoming connections to the Pgpool-II port (default 9999) to trusted client addresses:
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --remove-port=9999/tcp
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --add-source=<TRUSTED_IP_RANGE>
firewall-cmd --reload
2. In /etc/pgpool-II/pool_hba.conf, modify host authentication entries to require password authentication (such as scram-sha-256) instead of cert, and reload the daemon:
systemctl reload pgpool.service
Caveats:
Restricting access via firewall rules will block connection attempts from non-allowlisted client addresses. Transitioning authentication mechanisms away from client certificates requires modifying client application connection settings to supply credentials.
Warning:
Reloading firewall configurations or the Pgpool-II service will affect network connectivity and can interrupt active database sessions.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Authentication
Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism; Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
When a certificate is invalid or malicious, it might allow an attacker to spoof a trusted entity by interfering in the communication path between the host and client. The product might connect to a malicious host while believing it is a trusted host, or the product might be deceived into accepting spoofed data that appears to originate from a trusted host.
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