The vulnerability arises from PostgreSQL's incomplete tracking of changes to role membership, role attributes, and database ownership. When a role change occurs, the server continues to reuse cached row‑level security policies from a previous query plan, even if those policies are no longer valid. This stale policy allows a user who has recently lost privileges to read and modify rows that should now be protected.

PostgreSQL instances running any version prior to 18.5, 17.11, 16.15, 15.19, or 14.24 are affected.

The CVSS score of 4.2 indicates a moderate impact. The EPSS score is unavailable and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. An attacker must first alter role or ownership settings that change row‑level security requirements and then execute a query that the database reuses the old plan for. This attack path requires knowledge of the application’s privilege model and is therefore less likely to be widely exploitable, but it remains a concern for environments that rely heavily on role‑specific row security.