CVE-2021-29545 Heap buffer overflow in `SparseTensorToCSRSparseMatrix`

What is CVE-2021-29545?

CVE-2021-29545 is a low-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Google Tensorflow, published on 14 May 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. An attacker can trigger a denial of service via a `CHECK`-fail in converting sparse tensors to CSR Sparse matrices. This is because the implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/800346f2c03a27e182dd4fba48295f65e7790739/tensorflow/core/kernels/sparse/kernels.cc#L66) does a double redirection to access an element of an array allocated on the heap. If the value at `indices(i, 0)` is such that `indices(i, 0) + 1` is outside the bounds of `csr_row_ptr`, this results in writing outside of bounds of heap allocated data. The fix will be included in TensorFlow 2.5.0. We will also cherrypick this commit on TensorFlow 2.4.2, TensorFlow 2.3.3, TensorFlow 2.2.3 and TensorFlow 2.1.4, as these are also affected and still in supported range.

Weakness: CWE-131

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-29545?

28 open source packages ship an affected version, including tensorflow, tensorflow-cpu and tensorflow-gpu. It affects 1 product.

Products include Google Tensorflow.

How do I fix CVE-2021-29545?

Upgrade tensorflow to a fixed version for your release line: 2.1.4, 2.2.3, 2.3.3 or 2.4.2.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2021-29545 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-29545 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Google Tensorflow

• CVE-2023-25668 TensorFlow vulnerable to heap out-of-buffer read in the QuantizeAndDequantize operation Critical 9.8
• CVE-2018-7575 Integer Overflow or Wraparound in Google TensorFlow Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-37678 Arbitrary code execution due to YAML deserialization Critical 9.3
• CVE-2021-35958 Path traversal in n/a Critical 9.1
• CVE-2020-15202 Integer truncation in Shard API usage Critical 9.0

All Google Tensorflow vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-tensorflow-2021-29545, GHSA-hmg3-c7xj-6qwm, PYSEC-2021-182, PYSEC-2021-473, PYSEC-2021-671.