CVE-2023-30635 in TiKV
Summary
by MITRE • 04/14/2023
TiKV 6.1.2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (fatal error) upon an attempt to get a timestamp from the Placement Driver.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/24/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2023-30635 affects TiKV version 6.1.2, a distributed transactional key-value database system that forms a critical component of the TiDB ecosystem. This issue presents a significant security concern as it enables remote attackers to trigger a fatal error condition that results in system-wide denial of service. The flaw specifically manifests when the system attempts to retrieve a timestamp from the Placement Driver component, which serves as the central coordination service for managing cluster topology and scheduling decisions in TiKV deployments. The vulnerability represents a critical weakness in the distributed system's fault tolerance mechanisms and highlights potential design flaws in the timestamp acquisition process.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate error handling within the timestamp retrieval mechanism between TiKV nodes and the Placement Driver service. When a remote attacker initiates a request to obtain a timestamp from the Placement Driver, the system fails to properly validate or handle exceptional conditions that may arise during this communication process. This lack of robust error management creates a condition where malformed or malicious requests can cause the TiKV node to encounter a fatal error state, leading to complete system failure and denial of service for legitimate operations. The flaw operates at the intersection of distributed systems communication protocols and database transaction management, where the failure of timestamp coordination directly impacts the entire transaction processing pipeline.
The operational impact of CVE-2023-30635 extends beyond simple service disruption to potentially compromise the entire database cluster's availability and reliability. In production environments, this vulnerability could be exploited to bring down critical database services, affecting applications that depend on TiKV for data persistence and transactional consistency. The distributed nature of TiKV means that a single compromised node can potentially cascade failures throughout the cluster, making this vulnerability particularly dangerous in large-scale deployments. Organizations using TiKV in mission-critical applications face significant risk of data unavailability, transaction failures, and potential financial losses due to extended downtime. The vulnerability also represents a potential vector for attackers to perform coordinated denial of service attacks against database infrastructure, as the flaw can be triggered remotely without requiring authentication or privileged access.
Security mitigations for this vulnerability should focus on immediate patching of affected TiKV versions to 6.1.3 or later, which contains the necessary fixes to properly handle timestamp retrieval errors and prevent fatal system failures. Organizations should implement network-level protections such as firewall rules to restrict access to Placement Driver endpoints and consider deploying intrusion detection systems to monitor for suspicious timestamp request patterns. The remediation process must include thorough testing of patched environments to ensure that the fix does not introduce regressions in normal operations while maintaining the system's transactional integrity. Additionally, organizations should review their monitoring and alerting configurations to detect early signs of timestamp-related errors and implement automated recovery procedures to minimize service disruption. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-703 (Improper Check or Handling of Exceptional Conditions) and represents a specific instance of ATT&CK technique T1499.004 (Endpoint Denial of Service) within the context of distributed database systems.