AVID-2026-R0847

Description

Reference binding to nullptr in MatrixDiagV* ops in TensorFlow (CVE-2021-37657)

Details

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. In affected versions an attacker can cause undefined behavior via binding a reference to null pointer in all operations of type tf.raw_ops.MatrixDiagV*. The implementation has incomplete validation that the value of k is a valid tensor. We have check that this value is either a scalar or a vector, but there is no check for the number of elements. If this is an empty tensor, then code that accesses the first element of the tensor is wrong. We have patched the issue in GitHub commit f2a673bd34f0d64b8e40a551ac78989d16daad09. The fix will be included in TensorFlow 2.6.0. We will also cherrypick this commit on TensorFlow 2.5.1, TensorFlow 2.4.3, and TensorFlow 2.3.4, as these are also affected and still in supported range.

Reason for inclusion in AVID: CVE-2021-37657 details a software vulnerability in TensorFlow (MatrixDiagV* ops) involving binding a reference to a null pointer, enabling undefined behavior. It is a vulnerability within a widely used AI framework, affecting AI model training/inference pipelines. The issue is in a software dependency used to build/run AI systems, with published fixes and affected versions, satisfying the criteria for a software supply-chain vulnerability in general-purpose AI systems.

References

• NVD entry
• https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/security/advisories/GHSA-5xwc-mrhx-5g3m
• https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/commit/f2a673bd34f0d64b8e40a551ac78989d16daad09

Affected or Relevant Artifacts

• Developer: tensorflow
• Deployer: tensorflow
• Artifact Details:

Impact

AVID Taxonomy Categorization

• Risk domains: Security
• SEP subcategories: S0100: Software Vulnerability
• Lifecycle stages: L06: Deployment

CVSS

CWE

Other information

• Report Type: Advisory
• Credits:
• Date Reported: 2021-08-12
• Version: 0.3.3
• AVID Entry