PostgreSQL 11.1 Released To Address The Latest Open-Source Security Vulnerability

PostgreSQL 11.1 is out today with fixes over last month's PostgreSQL 11 introduction but there are also updates to the 10.6, 9.6, 9.4, 9.4, and 9.3 release streams due to a new security issue.

The security issue is CVE-2018-16850 that warrants the six new PostgreSQL point releases today. The security issue stems from a SQL injection issue with pg_upgrade/pg_dump that could lead to an attacker running arbitrary SQL statements with super-user privileges. Fortunately, the impact appears to be limited to when a super-user is running the PostgreSQL dump/upgrade commands. "Using a purpose-crafted trigger definition, an attacker can run arbitrary SQL statements with superuser privileges when a superuser runs pg_upgrade on the database or during a pg_dump dump/restore cycle. This attack requires a CREATE privilege on some non-temporary schema or a TRIGGER privilege on a table. This is exploitable in the default PostgreSQL configuration, where all users have CREATE privilege on public schema."

Besides this security fix, PostgreSQL 11.1 also has several other fixes, build improvements for macOS Mojave, Windows platform build fixes, and some crash fixes. If you missed the PostgreSQL 11.0 announcement from nearly a month ago, there are several improvements with this updated SQL database server release.

More details on the slew of PostgreSQL updates via PostgreSQL.org.