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NULL Pointer Dereference

CVE-2021-41495

Severity Medium
Score 5.3/10

Summary

** DISPUTED ** Null Pointer Dereference vulnerability exists in 'numpy.sort' in NumPy prior to 1.22.2 in the 'PyArray_DescrNew' function due to missing return-value validation, which allows attackers to conduct DoS attacks by repetitively creating sort arrays. NOTE: While correct that validation is missing, an error can only occur due to an exhaustion of memory. If the user can exhaust memory, they are already privileged. Further, it should be practically impossible to construct an attack which can target the memory exhaustion to occur at exactly this place. SCA AppSec team researched the issue and found out it can be considered a security issue. Although it might be difficult to exploit, there is indeed a missing required validation that leads to this issue.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-476 - NULL Pointer Dereference

A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit.

Advisory Timeline

  • Published