CVE-2021-29530

Vulnerability Description

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. An attacker can trigger a null pointer dereference by providing an invalid `permutation` to `tf.raw_ops.SparseMatrixSparseCholesky`. This is because the implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/080f1d9e257589f78b3ffb75debf584168aa6062/tensorflow/core/kernels/sparse/sparse_cholesky_op.cc#L85-L86) fails to properly validate the input arguments. Although `ValidateInputs` is called and there are checks in the body of this function, the code proceeds to the next line in `ValidateInputs` since `OP_REQUIRES`(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/080f1d9e257589f78b3ffb75debf584168aa6062/tensorflow/core/framework/op_requires.h#L41-L48) is a macro that only exits the current function. Thus, the first validation condition that fails in `ValidateInputs` will cause an early return from that function. However, the caller will continue execution from the next line. The fix is to either explicitly check `context->status()` or to convert `ValidateInputs` to return a `Status`. 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.

CVSS Score

Affected Products

Related Weaknesses (CWE)

References

• https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/commit/e6a7c7cc18c3aaad1ae0872cb0a959f5PatchThird Party Advisory
• https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/security/advisories/GHSA-xcwj-wfcm-m23cExploitPatchThird Party Advisory
• https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/commit/e6a7c7cc18c3aaad1ae0872cb0a959f5PatchThird Party Advisory
• https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/security/advisories/GHSA-xcwj-wfcm-m23cExploitPatchThird Party Advisory