CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-29543

Reachable Assertion

Published: May 14, 2021 | Modified: Jul 27, 2021
CVSS 3.x
5.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
2.1 LOW
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

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 tf.raw_ops.CTCGreedyDecoder. This is because the implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/1615440b17b364b875eb06f43d087381f1460a65/tensorflow/core/kernels/ctc_decoder_ops.cc#L37-L50) has a CHECK_LT inserted to validate some invariants. When this condition is false, the program aborts, instead of returning a valid error to the user. This abnormal termination can be weaponized in denial of service attacks. 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

The product contains an assert() or similar statement that can be triggered by an attacker, which leads to an application exit or other behavior that is more severe than necessary.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Tensorflow Google 2.4.0 *
Tensorflow Google 2.3.0 *
Tensorflow Google 2.2.0 *
Tensorflow Google * *

Extended Description

While assertion is good for catching logic errors and reducing the chances of reaching more serious vulnerability conditions, it can still lead to a denial of service. For example, if a server handles multiple simultaneous connections, and an assert() occurs in one single connection that causes all other connections to be dropped, this is a reachable assertion that leads to a denial of service.

Potential Mitigations

References