CVE-2021-29541

critical
Published 2021-05-21 · Modified 2023-12-06
CVSS v3
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
CVSS v2
VIR risk
9.5

Description

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. An attacker can trigger a dereference of a null pointer in `tf.raw_ops.StringNGrams`. This is because the implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/1cdd4da14282210cc759e468d9781741ac7d01bf/tensorflow/core/kernels/string_ngrams_op.cc#L67-L74) does not fully validate the `data_splits` argument. This would result in `ngrams_data`(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/1cdd4da14282210cc759e468d9781741ac7d01bf/tensorflow/core/kernels/string_ngrams_op.cc#L106-L110) to be a null pointer when the output would be computed to have 0 or negative size. Later writes to the output tensor would then cause a null pointer dereference. 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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-29541

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
arch archfixed2.5.0-1
debian debianforkyfixed0
debian debiansidfixed0

Package impact

EcosystemPackageVulnerableFixed
python PyPItensorflow<2.1.42.1.4
python PyPItensorflow>=2.2.0,<2.2.32.2.3
python PyPItensorflow>=2.3.0,<2.3.32.3.3
python PyPItensorflow>=2.4.0,<2.4.22.4.2
python PyPItensorflow-cpu<2.1.42.1.4
python PyPItensorflow-cpu>=2.2.0,<2.2.32.2.3
python PyPItensorflow-cpu>=2.3.0,<2.3.32.3.3
python PyPItensorflow-cpu>=2.4.0,<2.4.22.4.2
python PyPItensorflow-gpu<2.1.42.1.4
python PyPItensorflow-gpu>=2.2.0,<2.2.32.2.3
python PyPItensorflow-gpu>=2.3.0,<2.3.32.3.3
python PyPItensorflow-gpu>=2.4.0,<2.4.22.4.2
python PyPItensorflow<ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b||>=2.4.0,<2.4.2ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b
python PyPItensorflow-cpu<ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b||>=2.4.0,<2.4.2ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b
python PyPItensorflow-gpu<ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b||>=2.4.0,<2.4.2ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b

References

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.