What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-28975

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2020-11-21 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

svm_predict_values in svm.cpp in Libsvm v324, as used in scikit-learn 0.23.2 and other products, allows attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault) via a crafted model SVM (introduced via pickle, json, or any other model permanence standard) with a large value in the _n_support array. NOTE: the scikit-learn vendor's position is that the behavior can only occur if the library's API is violated by an application that changes a private attribute.

Affected products

• scikit-learn/scikit-learn: from 0.23.2 before 1.0.1 — fixed in 1.0.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: scikit-learn/scikit-learn 1.0.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160281/SciKit-Learn-0.23.2-Denial-Of-Service.html
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Nov/44
• https://github.com/cjlin1/libsvm/blob/9a3a9708926dec87d382c43b203f2ca19c2d56a0/svm.cpp#L2501
• https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/commit/1bf13d567d3cd74854aa8343fd25b61dd768bb85
• https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/issues/18891
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202301-03
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160281/SciKit-Learn-0.23.2-Denial-Of-Service.html
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Nov/44
• https://github.com/cjlin1/libsvm/blob/9a3a9708926dec87d382c43b203f2ca19c2d56a0/svm.cpp#L2501
• https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/commit/1bf13d567d3cd74854aa8343fd25b61dd768bb85
• https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/issues/18891
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202301-03

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