PostgreSQL before 8.3.7, 8.2.13, 8.1.17, 8.0.21, and 7.4.25 allows remote authenticated users to cause a denial of service (stack consumption and crash) by triggering a failure in the conversion of a localized error message to a client-specified encoding, as demonstrated using mismatched encoding conversion requests.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2009-0922 is rated High Exploit Risk (65.4/100): CVSS Medium severity, with high exploitation likelihood (EPSS 10.24%, 95th percentile). Core evidence: 4 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). EPSS rose +1.15% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32849 | exploit_db | edb | 2009-03-11 | Exploit-DB ↗ |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ | |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ | |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-06-15 | 9.10% | 10.24% | +1.15% |
| 2 | 2026-05-15 | 9.67% | 9.10% | -0.58% |
| 3 | 2026-05-07 | — | 9.67% | — |
Full EPSS history (11 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
8.0 | 2.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
gentoo
|
normal | CVE-2009-0922: 1 GLSA(s) (201110-22), 3 atom(s) (dev-db/postgresql, dev-db/postgresql-base, dev-db/postgresql-server); latest impact normal. | https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2009-0922 |
redhat
|
low | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2009-0922 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2009-0922 medium priority: Ubuntu including 5 source packages (postgresql-7.4, postgresql-8.0, postgresql-8.1, postgresql-8.2, postgresql-8.3), 55 status rows across 11 suites (dapper, gutsy, hardy, intrepid, jaunty, karmic, lucid, maverick, natty, oneiric, upstream): DNE 40, released 7, ignored 5, not-affected 2, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2009-0922 |
: Per: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488156 "PostgreSQL allows remote authenticated users to cause a momentary denial of service (crash due to stack consumption) when there is a failure to convert a localized error message to the client-specified encoding. In releases 8.3.6, 8.2.12, 8.1.16. 8.0.20, and 7.4.24, a trivial misconfiguration is sufficient to provoke a crash. In older releases it is necessary to select a locale and client encoding for which specific messages fail to translate, and so a given installation may or may not be vulnerable depending on the administrator-determined locale setting. Releases 8.3.7, 8.2.13, 8.1.17, 8.0.21, and 7.4.25 are secure against all known variants of this issue."
This issue has been addressed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 via: https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-1484.html and in Red Hat Application Stack v2 via: https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-1067.html
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| postgresql | postgresql | 7.4.24 | cpe:2.3:a:postgresql:postgresql:7.4.24:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| postgresql | postgresql | 8.0.20 | cpe:2.3:a:postgresql:postgresql:8.0.20:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| postgresql | postgresql | 8.1.16 | cpe:2.3:a:postgresql:postgresql:8.1.16:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| postgresql | postgresql | 8.2.12 | cpe:2.3:a:postgresql:postgresql:8.2.12:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| postgresql | postgresql | 8.3.6 | cpe:2.3:a:postgresql:postgresql:8.3.6:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |