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GHSA-xqfj-35wv-m3cr

LowCVSS 2.5 / 10
Published May 21, 2021·Last modified Mar 13, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

An attacker can trigger a dereference of a null pointer in tf.raw_ops.StringNGrams:

import tensorflow as tf

data=tf.constant([''] * 11, shape=[11], dtype=tf.string)

splits = [0]*115
splits.append(3)
data_splits=tf.constant(splits, shape=[116], dtype=tf.int64)

tf.raw_ops.StringNGrams(data=data, data_splits=data_splits, separator=b'Ss',
                        ngram_widths=[7,6,11],
                        left_pad='ABCDE', right_pad=b'ZYXWVU',
                        pad_width=50, preserve_short_sequences=True)

This is because the implementation does not fully validate the data_splits argument. This would result in ngrams_data 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.

Patches

We have patched the issue in GitHub commit ba424dd8f16f7110eea526a8086f1a155f14f22b.

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.

For more information

Please consult our security guide for more information regarding the security model and how to contact us with issues and questions.

Attribution

This vulnerability has been reported by Yakun Zhang and Ying Wang of Baidu X-Team.

Risk Scores
Base Score
2.5

The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is difficult for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability and may require special conditions. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a low impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
2.3

Limited exploitation activity has been observed. Close monitoring and planned remediation are recommended.

EPSS
0.19%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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Low severity
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