What is CVE-2021-29609?

CVE-2021-29609 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Google Tensorflow, classified under Improper Initialization. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2021-05-14.

How severe is CVE-2021-29609?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.

NULL pointer dereference in Google Tensorflow

CVE-2021-29609

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. Incomplete validation in `SparseAdd` results in allowing attackers to exploit undefined behavior (dereferencing null pointers) as well as write outside of bounds of heap allocated data. The implementation(https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/656e7673b14acd7835dc778867f84916c6d1cac2/tensorflow/core/kernels/sparse_add_op.cc) has a large set of validation for the two sparse tensor inputs (6 tensors in total), but does not validate that the tensors are not empty or that the second dimension of `*_indices` matches the size of corresponding `*_shape`. This allows attackers to send tensor triples that represent invalid sparse tensors to abuse code assumptions that are not protected by validation. 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.

Vulnerability class: Dirty Pipe (CVE-2022-0847)

Published 2021-05-14 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (12.8th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 13th percentile — 12.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Google Tensorflow
Tensorflow — versions < 2.1.4, >= 2.2.0, < 2.2.3, >= 2.3.0, < 2.3.3

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/security/advisories/GHSA-cjc7-49v2-jp64 (Exploit, Patch, Third Party Advisory)
github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/commit/41727ff06111117bdf86b37db198217fd7a143cc (Patch, Third Party Advisory)
github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/commit/6fd02f44810754ae7481838b6a67c5df7f909ca3 (Patch, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-29609?: CVE-2021-29609 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Google Tensorflow, classified under Improper Initialization. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2021-05-14.
How severe is CVE-2021-29609?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.