CVE-2026-61700

MariaDB Connector/J prior to versions 2.7.14, 3.3.5, 3.4.3, and 3.5.9 encodes and decodes protocol text and performs client-side escaping under the assumption that the connection character set is UTF-8. The server can report a mid-session change to character_set_client through OK-packet session-state tracking, including a change caused by SET NAMES, a stored routine or trigger, server configuration, or a hostile server. If character_set_client changes to a non-UTF-8 value, the driver continues to read and write UTF-8 while the server interprets the same bytes under another encoding, causing silent data corruption and a client/server charset-confusion mismatch that can defeat byte-wise quoting or escaping.

MariaDB Connector/J prior to versions 2.7.14, 3.3.5, 3.4.3, and 3.5.9 can be coerced into transmitting the account password over an insecure connection during PAM dialog authentication. The mysql_clear_password plugin is gated behind a secure transport, but the sibling PAM handler SendPamAuthPacketFactory, named dialog by the server, does not declare that requirement and inherits the default secure-required value false. A hostile or man-in-the-middle server can send an Authentication Switch Request for dialog over plain TCP, causing the driver to return the user's password in cleartext when sslMode=DISABLE and restrictedAuth=null, which is the default configuration.

MariaDB Connector/J prior to versions 2.7.14, 3.3.5, 3.4.3, and 3.5.9, when a Java application connects with sslMode=verify-full or sslMode=verify-ca, supplies a password, and does not configure serverSslCert or trustStore, can accept an untrusted self-signed certificate through the fallbackToSystemTrustStore=true ephemeral trust manager and record its certFingerprint for later identity binding. The OK-packet and authentication-switch paths enforce the certificate fingerprint, but the initial-handshake path does not. HandshakeResponse.encode() can therefore build and send a mysql_clear_password response before checking certFingerprint, sslMode, or whether the authentication plugin is resistant to a man-in-the-middle, and the initial path also bypasses restrictedAuth. An active man-in-the-middle or hostile server can present a self-signed certificate, claim to be MariaDB, select mysql_clear_password as the initial authentication plugin, and receive the full database password before the connection is rejected.