Athena OdbcApplication · Amazon

CVE-2026-5485

HIGH · 7.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-04-03
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 2.0.5.1 or later.
See remediation →
81/100
Remediation priority · High
No privileges Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
OS command injection in the browser-based authentication component in Amazon Athena ODBC driver before 2.0.5.1 on Linux might allow a threat actor to execute arbitrary code by using specially crafted connection parameters that are loaded by the driver during a local user-initiated connection. To remediate this issue, users should upgrade to version 2.0.5.1 or later.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-78

User input reaches a shell or system command without being fully separated from the command itself, so an attacker can append their own instructions. Because these run with the application's privileges, it often means full control of the host. The lasting fix is to avoid the shell entirely — call APIs directly and pass arguments as data, never as concatenated strings.

General guidance for the os command injection class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Athena OdbcApplication
Affected:< 2.0.5.1

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 2.0.5.1 or later
Fixed in 2.0.5.1
Recommended fix High confidence

2.0.5.1 or later (e.g., 2.1.0.0)

  1. Identify the current installed version of Amazon Athena ODBC driver on Linux using package manager or by checking the installed package
  2. Download the updated Amazon Athena ODBC driver version 2.0.5.1 or later from the official AWS download location
  3. For RPM-based distributions (RHEL, CentOS, Fedora), run: sudo rpm -Uvh AmazonAthenaODBC-{version}.rpm
  4. For DEB-based distributions (Debian, Ubuntu), convert the RPM using alien or download the .deb package if available
  5. After installation, verify the new version is installed: rpm -qa | grep Athena or dpkg -l | grep Athena
  6. Restart any applications or services that use the ODBC driver to ensure they load the updated library
  7. Test database connectivity to confirm the driver is functioning correctly after the upgrade

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $3,200. Get the upgrade done

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-5485 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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