Vulnerability Database

328,725

Total vulnerabilities in the database

NULL Pointer Dereference and Access of Uninitialized Pointer in TensorFlow

Impact

The code for boosted trees in TensorFlow is still missing validation. This allows malicious users to read and write outside of bounds of heap allocated data as well as trigger denial of service (via dereferencing nullptrs or via CHECK-failures).

This follows after CVE-2021-41208 where these APIs were still vulnerable to multiple security issues.

Note: Given that the boosted trees implementation in TensorFlow is unmaintained, it is recommend to no longer use these APIs. Instead, please use the downstream TensorFlow Decision Forests project which is newer and supports more features.

These APIs are now deprecated in TensorFlow 2.8. We will remove TensorFlow's boosted trees APIs in subsequent releases.

Patches

We have patched the known issues in multiple GitHub commits.

The fix will be included in TensorFlow 2.8.0. We will also cherrypick this commit on TensorFlow 2.7.1, TensorFlow 2.6.3, and TensorFlow 2.5.3, as these are also affected and still in supported range.

This should allow users to use existing boosted trees APIs for a while until they migrate to TensorFlow Decision Forests, while guaranteeing that known vulnerabilities are fixed.

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

These vulnerabilities have been reported by Yu Tian of Qihoo 360 AIVul Team and Faysal Hossain Shezan from University of Virginia. Some of the issues have been discovered internally after a careful audit of the APIs.

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Unknown
  • Score:
  • AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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