CVE-2016-6656: n/a Pivotal Greenplum 4.3.0.0 to 4.3.9.1 and older…

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

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.

UnknownCVSS not scoredNot KEV-listedUpdatedAug 6, 2024, 01:36 UTC (UTC+00:00)

Security readout for executives and security teams

CVE-2016-6656 affects Pivotal Greenplum versions before 4.3.10.0. A privileged database user who can create GPHDFS external tables could inject arbitrary system commands. This is mainly an insider, compromised-admin, or over-permissioned-account risk, not an unauthenticated internet-facing issue based on the provided sources. Exposure is limited to organizations running old Pivotal Greenplum releases and using or permitting GPHDFS external table creation. Systems with broad gpadmin use or delegated GPHDFS protocol permissions have the highest practical exposure. Treat this as a targeted remediation item for legacy Greenplum environments. Prioritize if Greenplum supports sensitive data workloads, has shared admin accounts, or grants GPHDFS permissions beyond a small trusted group. Mitigation focus: Upgrade Greenplum before 4.3.10.0 to 4.3.10.0 or a supported later release.; Review and restrict gpadmin access to necessary administrators only.; Remove unnecessary GPHDFS protocol permissions from non-administrative users..

Prepared: Jun 13, 2026, 13:16 UTC (UTC+00:00)

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Potential ATT&CK relevance

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Vulnerability profileCVE Program record

Severity: Unknown
CVSS: Not scored
Known Exploited: No
Published: Dec 16, 2016, 09:02 UTC (UTC+00:00)

Official CVE source material

CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5

These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.

0CVSS vectors

0Timeline events

0ADP providers

2Source links

CVSS and timeline data

No CVSS vectors or timeline events were available in the normalized CVE source material.

Source materials

CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
https://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-6656CVE reference · x_refsource_CONFIRM

Affected products

Products and packages named in the record

VendorProductVersion / packageStatus

n/aPivotal Greenplum 4.3.0.0 to 4.3.9.1 and older versions that are end of lifePivotal Greenplum 4.3.0.0 to 4.3.9.1 and older versions that are end of lifeListed

Weakness

CWE details

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