mysql type error Value type []uint8 into type *time.Time for various tables

[FalcoGer]

What did you do? (required. The issue will be closed when not provided.)

I fetched exploitdb, then trying to fetch awesomepoc, yielded an error message.
Clearing the fetch_meta table allowed me to fetch the awesomepoc data without that error.

What did you expect to happen?

• Fetching the data

What happened instead?

• Abort with error.

• Current Output

Please re-run the command using -debug and provide the output below.

$ go-exploitdb fetch inthewild --dbtype mysql --dbpath "goexploitdb:passwd@tcp(serverhostname:3306)" --debug --debug-sql

2025/01/20 10:02:43 /home/user/repositories/go-exploitdb/db/rdb.go:438
[2.554ms] [rows:-] SELECT DATABASE()
[...]
2025/01/20 10:02:45 /home/user/repositories/go-exploitdb/db/rdb.go:142
[10.217ms] [rows:1] SELECT SCHEMA_NAME from Information_schema.SCHEMATA where SCHEMA_NAME LIKE 'goexploitdb%' ORDER BY SCHEMA_NAME='goexploitdb' DESC,SCHEMA_NAME limit 1

2025/01/20 10:02:45 /home/user/repositories/go-exploitdb/db/rdb.go:142
[40.906ms] [rows:-] SELECT count(*) FROM information_schema.statistics WHERE table_schema = 'goexploitdb' AND table_name = 'in_the_wilds' AND index_name = 'idx_in_the_wild_exploit_id'

2025/01/20 10:02:45 /home/user/repositories/go-exploitdb/db/rdb.go:463 sql: Scan error on column index 1, name "created_at": unsupported Scan, storing driver.Value type []uint8 into type *time.Time
[8.572ms] [rows:1] SELECT * FROM `fetch_meta` WHERE `fetch_meta`.`deleted_at` IS NULL LIMIT 1
Failed to get FetchMeta from DB. err: sql: Scan error on column index 1, name "created_at": unsupported Scan, storing driver.Value type []uint8 into type *time.Time

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

1. Connect to mysql and create new database and user

CREATE DATABASE goexploitdb;
CREATE USER 'goexploitdb'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'passwd';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON goexploitdb.* TO 'goexploitdb'@'%';

2. Fetch any of the data using the fetch command. This will initially work.
3. Run the exact same command again. It will fail now with the error message: Failed to get FetchMeta from DB. err: sql: Scan error on column index 1, name "created_at": unsupported Scan, storing driver.Value type []uint8 into type *time.Time

Configuration (MUST fill this out):

• Go version (go version): go version go1.23.4 linux/amd64
• Go environment (go env):

GO111MODULE=''
GOARCH='amd64'
GOBIN=''
GOCACHE='/home/user/.cache/go-build'
GOENV='/home/user/.config/go/env'
GOEXE=''
GOEXPERIMENT=''
GOFLAGS=''
GOHOSTARCH='amd64'
GOHOSTOS='linux'
GOINSECURE=''
GOMODCACHE='/home/user/go/pkg/mod'
GONOPROXY=''
GONOSUMDB=''
GOOS='linux'
GOPATH='/home/user/go'
GOPRIVATE=''
GOPROXY='https://proxy.golang.org,direct'
GOROOT='/usr/lib/go-1.23'
GOSUMDB='sum.golang.org'
GOTMPDIR=''
GOTOOLCHAIN='auto'
GOTOOLDIR='/usr/lib/go-1.23/pkg/tool/linux_amd64'
GOVCS=''
GOVERSION='go1.23.4'
GODEBUG=''
GOTELEMETRY='local'
GOTELEMETRYDIR='/home/user/.config/go/telemetry'
GCCGO='gccgo'
GOAMD64='v1'
AR='ar'
CC='gcc'
CXX='g++'
CGO_ENABLED='1'
GOMOD='/dev/null'
GOWORK=''
CGO_CFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_CPPFLAGS=''
CGO_CXXFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_FFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_LDFLAGS='-O2 -g'
PKG_CONFIG='pkg-config'
GOGCCFLAGS='-fPIC -m64 -pthread -Wl,--no-gc-sections -fmessage-length=0 -ffile-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build3396132397=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches'

• go-exploitdb environment: 7d2fc13a9f55fa36e545077c9dfb63c3db0d099c
• go-exploitdb version: go-exploitdb v0.5.0 7d2fc13
• command: See above

[FalcoGer]

Same issue when actually searching

$ go-exploitdb search --param "CVE-2021-3156" --dbtype mysql --dbpath "goexploitdb:passwd@tcp(serverhostname:3306)" --debug

Failed to get OffensiveSecurity. err: sql: Scan error on column index 4, name "date_published": unsupported Scan, storing driver.Value type []uint8 into type *time.Time

[MaineK00n]

@FalcoGer
Sorry for the late reply.
You need to add parseTime=True.

$ go-exploitdb fetch awesomepoc --dbtype mysql --dbpath "root:password@tcp(127.0.0.1:3306)/test"
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] Fetching Awesome Poc Exploit 
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] Awesome Poc Exploit                      count=823
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] Insert Exploit into go-exploitdb.        db=mysql
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] Inserting 823 Exploits 
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] Inserting new Exploits 
823 / 823 [-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100.00% 4108 p/s
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] No CveID Exploit Count                   count=0
INFO[02-04|09:59:27] CveID Exploit Count                      count=823

$ go-exploitdb fetch awesomepoc --dbtype mysql --dbpath "root:password@tcp(127.0.0.1:3306)/test"
Failed to get FetchMeta from DB. err: sql: Scan error on column index 1, name "created_at": unsupported Scan, storing driver.Value type []uint8 into type *time.Time

$ go-exploitdb fetch awesomepoc --dbtype mysql --dbpath "root:password@tcp(127.0.0.1:3306)/test?parseTime=true"
INFO[02-04|09:59:41] Fetching Awesome Poc Exploit 
INFO[02-04|09:59:41] Awesome Poc Exploit                      count=823
INFO[02-04|09:59:41] Insert Exploit into go-exploitdb.        db=mysql
INFO[02-04|09:59:41] Inserting 823 Exploits 
INFO[02-04|09:59:41] Deleting old Exploits 
823 / 823 [--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100.00% ? p/s
INFO[02-04|09:59:41] Inserting new Exploits 
823 / 823 [--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100.00% ? p/s
INFO[02-04|09:59:42] No CveID Exploit Count                   count=0
INFO[02-04|09:59:42] CveID Exploit Count                      count=823

[FalcoGer]

that does it. but I don't know why.
maybe some kind of documentation, automatically doing that, or a nicer error message would be nice.

[MaineK00n]

The reason is as follows.

parseTime=true changes the output type of DATE and DATETIME values to time.Time instead of []byte / string The date or datetime like 0000-00-00 00:00:00 is converted into zero value of time.Time.

https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql?tab=readme-ov-file#parsetime