CVE-2021-29567

TensorFlow SparseDenseCwiseMul validation vulnerability

• CVSS 5.5
• CWE-617 Reachable Assertion
• Memory Corruption
• Remote

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. Due to lack of validation in `tf.raw_ops.SparseDenseCwiseMul`, an attacker can trigger denial of service via `CHECK`-fails or accesses to outside the bounds of heap allocated data. Since the implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/38178a2f7a681a7835bb0912702a134bfe3b4d84/tensorflow/core/kernels/sparse_dense_binary_op_shared.cc#L68-L80) only validates the rank of the input arguments but no constraints between dimensions(https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/raw_ops/SparseDenseCwiseMul), an attacker can abuse them to trigger internal `CHECK` assertions (and cause program termination, denial of service) or to write to memory outside of bounds of heap allocated tensor buffers. 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.

CVE

CVE-2021-29567

CWE

CWE-617 Reachable Assertion

CVSS base score

5.5

Published

2021-05-14

OWASP

A08 Software and Data Integrity Failures

Orthogonal defect classification

Checking

Code defect classification

Incorrect Check

Category

Memory Corruption

Subcategory

Out-of-Bound Accesses

Accessibility scope

Remote

Impact

Denial of Service (DoS)

Affected component

TensorFlow

Fixed by upgrading

Yes

Solution

Update TensorFlow to version 2.5.0 or higher.

import tensorflow as tf

sparse_tensor = tf.sparse.SparseTensor(indices=[[0, 0], [1, 1]], values=[1.0, 2.0], dense_shape=[2, 2])
dense_tensor = tf.constant([[1.0, 2.0, 3.0], [4.0, 5.0, 6.0]])

result = tf.raw_ops.SparseDenseCwiseMul(sparse_indices=sparse_tensor.indices,
                                         sparse_values=sparse_tensor.values,
                                         sparse_shape=sparse_tensor.dense_shape,
                                         dense=dense_tensor)

print(result)

import tensorflow as tf

sparse_tensor = tf.sparse.SparseTensor(indices=[[0, 0], [1, 1]],
                                       values=[1.0, 2.0],
                                       dense_shape=[2, 2])

dense_tensor = tf.constant([[1.0, 2.0],
                            [4.0, 5.0]])

result = tf.raw_ops.SparseDenseCwiseMul(
    sparse_indices=sparse_tensor.indices,
    sparse_values=sparse_tensor.values,
    sparse_shape=sparse_tensor.dense_shape,
    dense=dense_tensor
)

print(result)

@misc{vaitp:cve202129567,
  title        = {{TensorFlow SparseDenseCwiseMul validation vulnerability}},
  author       = {Bogaerts, Fr\'ed\'eric and Ivaki, Naghmeh and Fonseca, Jos\'e},
  year         = {2021},
  note         = {VAITP Python Vulnerability Dataset, entry CVE-2021-29567},
  howpublished = {\url{https://netpack.pt/vaitp/vulnerability/CVE-2021-29567/}}
}