Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
A malicious ClickHouse user with high privileges can crash the service by triggering a stack overflow. The impact is availability, not confirmed data theft or data modification. Organizations running ClickHouse versions before 19.14.3.3 should prioritize upgrade planning and exposure review.
Executive priority
Treat as a high-priority availability risk for environments that depend on ClickHouse uptime. The privilege requirement lowers mass-exploitation risk, but a compromised privileged account could still disrupt analytics or operational services.
Technical view
CVE-2019-16536 is a network-reachable ClickHouse denial-of-service issue caused by a stack overflow. CVSS v4 is 8.2 high with high privileges required, no user interaction, and high vulnerable-system and subsequent-system availability impact. The source bundle identifies affected ClickHouse before 19.14.3.3.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most relevant where ClickHouse is reachable by authenticated high-privilege users, service accounts, or compromised credentials. Internet exposure increases business risk, but the bundle does not provide deployment-specific exposure data.
Exploitation context
The bundle does not show CISA KEV listing or other evidence of active exploitation. Exploitation requires an authenticated malicious client with high privileges, reducing likelihood but not eliminating risk from insiders or credential compromise.
Researcher notes
Evidence is limited to the CVE record and ClickHouse security changelog reference. No exploit code, public exploitation, or detailed root-cause advisory is provided in the bundle. Affected metadata lacks CPEs, so asset matching should use product and version inventory.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade ClickHouse to 19.14.3.3 or later, following vendor guidance.
- Restrict ClickHouse network access to trusted application and administration paths.
- Review high-privilege ClickHouse accounts and remove unnecessary access.
- Monitor ClickHouse crashes, restarts, and unusual authenticated client activity.
- Check the ClickHouse security changelog for version-specific operational guidance.
Validation and detection
- Inventory all ClickHouse deployments and record exact versions.
- Flag any ClickHouse version earlier than 19.14.3.3 for remediation.
- Confirm ClickHouse is not exposed beyond required trusted networks.
- Review authentication logs for unexpected high-privilege client usage.
- Verify post-upgrade service stability and version reporting.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-120: Exact CWE lookup
Use the exact CWE identifier as the starting point before reviewing related ATT&CK behavior. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2019-16536 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 8.2 (4.0)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H
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.
CVSS vector scores
1 official scoreWe collect every scored CVSS vector available in the official CNA and ADP containers. When more than one version is present, the table keeps the source vectors side by side instead of collapsing them into the highest score.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H——Primary CVE scoreVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 4.0 score
8.2HighVector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://clickhouse.com/docs/whats-new/security-changelogCVE reference
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.