CVE-2021-29591 Stack overflow due to looping TFLite subgraph

What is CVE-2021-29591?

CVE-2021-29591 is a high-severity denial of service 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. TFlite graphs must not have loops between nodes. However, this condition was not checked and an attacker could craft models that would result in infinite loop during evaluation. In certain cases, the infinite loop would be replaced by stack overflow due to too many recursive calls. For example, the `While` implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/106d8f4fb89335a2c52d7c895b7a7485465ca8d9/tensorflow/lite/kernels/while.cc) could be tricked into a scneario where both the body and the loop subgraphs are the same. Evaluating one of the subgraphs means calling the `Eval` function for the other and this quickly exhaust all stack space. 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. Please consult our security guide(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/SECURITY.md) for more information regarding the security model and how to contact us with issues and questions.

Weakness: CWE-674, CWE-835

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-29591?

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-2021-29591?

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

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2021-29591 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-29591 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-2021-29591, GHSA-cwv3-863g-39vx, PYSEC-2021-228, PYSEC-2021-519, PYSEC-2021-717.