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Null pointer dereference in tensorflow-lite

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Sep 24, 2020 in tensorflow/tensorflow • Updated Feb 1, 2023

Package

pip tensorflow (pip)

Affected versions

< 1.15.4
>= 2.0.0, < 2.0.3
>= 2.1.0, < 2.1.2
= 2.2.0
= 2.3.0

Patched versions

1.15.4
2.0.3
2.1.2
2.2.1
2.3.1
pip tensorflow-cpu (pip)
< 1.15.4
>= 2.0.0, < 2.0.3
>= 2.1.0, < 2.1.2
= 2.2.0
= 2.3.0
1.15.4
2.0.3
2.1.2
2.2.1
2.3.1
pip tensorflow-gpu (pip)
< 1.15.4
>= 2.0.0, < 2.0.3
>= 2.1.0, < 2.1.2
= 2.2.0
= 2.3.0
1.15.4
2.0.3
2.1.2
2.2.1
2.3.1

Description

Impact

A crafted TFLite model can force a node to have as input a tensor backed by a nullptr buffer. This can be achieved by changing a buffer index in the flatbuffer serialization to convert a read-only tensor to a read-write one. The runtime assumes that these buffers are written to before a possible read, hence they are initialized with nullptr:
https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/0e68f4d3295eb0281a517c3662f6698992b7b2cf/tensorflow/lite/core/subgraph.cc#L1224-L1227

However, by changing the buffer index for a tensor and implicitly converting that tensor to be a read-write one, as there is nothing in the model that writes to it, we get a null pointer dereference.

Patches

We have patched the issue in 0b5662bc and will release patch releases for all versions between 1.15 and 2.3.

We recommend users to upgrade to TensorFlow 1.15.4, 2.0.3, 2.1.2, 2.2.1, or 2.3.1.

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 members of the Aivul Team from Qihoo 360 but was also discovered through variant analysis of GHSA-cvpc-8phh-8f45.

References

@mihaimaruseac mihaimaruseac published to tensorflow/tensorflow Sep 24, 2020
Reviewed Sep 25, 2020
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 25, 2020
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Sep 25, 2020
Last updated Feb 1, 2023

Severity

Moderate
5.9
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2020-15209

GHSA ID

GHSA-qh32-6jjc-qprm

Source code

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