Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-42198

high Nessus Plugin ID 310989

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- pgjdbc is an open source postgresql JDBC Driver. From version 42.2.0 to before version 42.7.11, pgjdbc is vulnerable to a client-side denial of service during SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication. A malicious server can instruct the driver to perform SCRAM authentication with a very large iteration count. With a large enough value, the client spends an unbounded amount of CPU time inside PBKDF2 before authentication can fail. A single attempt ties up a CPU core. Repeated or concurrent attempts exhaust client CPU and can wedge connection pools. In affected versions, loginTimeout did not fully mitigate this problem. When loginTimeout expired, the caller could stop waiting, but the worker thread performing the connection attempt could continue running and burning CPU inside the SCRAM PBKDF2 computation. This issue has been patched in version 42.7.11. (CVE-2026-42198)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2026-42198

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-42198

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-42198

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 310989

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_42198.nasl

Version: 1.6

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 4/29/2026

Updated: 5/5/2026

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 4.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-42198

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:U/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:11.0, cpe:/o:centos:centos:7, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:postgresql-jdbc, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:postgresql-jdbc-javadoc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:postgresql-jdbc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:postgresql-jdbc-javadoc, cpe:/o:centos:centos:8, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:24.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:10, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:libpgjava, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:libpgjava, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:25.10, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:26.04

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/local_checks_enabled, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-42198