CVE-2021-37636: Floating point exception in `SparseDenseCwiseDiv` in TensorFlow

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2021-08-12 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-369

Description

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. In affected versions the implementation of `tf.raw_ops.SparseDenseCwiseDiv` is vulnerable to a division by 0 error. The [implementation](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/a1bc56203f21a5a4995311825ffaba7a670d7747/tensorflow/core/kernels/sparse_dense_binary_op_shared.cc#L56) uses a common class for all binary operations but fails to treat the division by 0 case separately. We have patched the issue in GitHub commit d9204be9f49520cdaaeb2541d1dc5187b23f31d9. 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.

Affected products

tensorflow: from 2.3.0 before 2.3.4; from 2.4.0 before 2.4.3; 2.5.0, 2.6.0-rc0, 2.6.0-rc1, 2.6.0-rc2 — fixed in 2.3.4, 2.4.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: tensorflow 2.3.4, 2.4.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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