CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2016-6656 — An issue was discovered in Pivotal Greenplum before 4.3.10.0

High CVSS 7.2

An issue was discovered in Pivotal Greenplum before 4.3.10.0. Creation of external tables using GPHDFS protocol has a vulnerability whereby arbitrary commands can be injected into the system. In order to exploit this vulnerability the user must have superuser 'gpadmin' access to the system or have been granted GPHDFS protocol permissions in order to create a GPHDFS external table.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.2 (3.0)
Published
2016-12-16
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-77

Affected products

  • pivotal_software / greenplum

Matched remediation archetype

Command, code, expression, and template injection

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Trace untrusted values to process execution, interpreters, evaluators, template engines, dynamic imports, and administrative scripting features.
  • Determine whether the affected path is reachable across each trust boundary and which service account or host privilege it inherits.
  • Review configuration for optional execution features, unsafe compatibility modes, and shell invocation.

Remediate safely

  • Replace string-built commands or evaluated code with fixed operations and structured argument APIs that do not invoke a shell.
  • Use strict allowlists for operation identifiers and reject unexpected input before it reaches any interpreter.
  • Update the affected component and add inert regression tests covering metacharacters, encoding variants, and alternate request paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.