CVE-2021-29583

Heap buffer overflow and undefined behavior in `FusedBatchNorm`

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: May 14, 2021 at 07:15 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 03:47 AM UTC
2 products affected across 2 vendorsTensorflowTensorFlow

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Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%

Description

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. The implementation of `tf.raw_ops.FusedBatchNorm` is vulnerable to a heap buffer overflow. If the tensors are empty, the same implementation can trigger undefined behavior by dereferencing null pointers. The implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/57d86e0db5d1365f19adcce848dfc1bf89fdd4c7/tensorflow/core/kernels/fused_batch_norm_op.cc) fails to validate that `scale`, `offset`, `mean` and `variance` (the last two only when required) all have the same number of elements as the number of channels of `x`. This results in heap out of bounds reads when the buffers backing these tensors are indexed past their boundary. If the tensors are empty, the validation mentioned in the above paragraph would also trigger and prevent the undefined behavior. 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.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 2.1.42.2.0 ≤ v < 2.2.32.3.0 ≤ v < 2.3.32.4.0 ≤ v < 2.4.2
Affected range stops below 2.1.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.2.3, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.3.3, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.4.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
v < 2.1.4v < 2.2.3v < 2.3.3v < 2.4.2
Affected range stops below 2.1.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.2.3, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.3.3, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.4.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-476CWE-125

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