Advisories

darknet Integer Overflow in Convolutional Layer Buffer Sizing Leads to Heap Buffer Overflow

Go Back
severity
high
date
Affecting
  • darknet <= 6.0

CWE
  • CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound
  • CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write
CVSS
8.5
CVSS V4 Vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Credit
mtholmquist
Description
hank-ai/darknet sizes a convolutional layer's weight and output heap buffers by multiplying configuration fields taken from a .cfg file in unchecked 32-bit int arithmetic. In src-lib/convolutional_layer.cpp, l.nweights is computed as (c / groups) * n * size * size and l.outputs as l.out_h * l.out_w * l.out_c, and both feed xcalloc directly. A .cfg whose true dimension product exceeds INT_MAX wraps to a small or zero value, so the allocation is undersized; for example width and height of 256 with filters of 65536 gives 2^32, which wraps to 0. forward_convolutional_layer then re-derives the GEMM dimensions with a different operand order, computing k as l.size*l.size*l.c / l.groups where the allocation divided before multiplying, and reads and writes through the undersized buffer. Loading the crafted .cfg for inference or training is sufficient and no valid .weights file is required. The reported proof of concept observed a heap buffer overflow read in gemm_nn_fast under AddressSanitizer and glibc allocator metadata corruption in a release build of the same input, indicating an out-of-bounds write.

Ready to get Started?

Explore VulnCheck, a next-generation Cyber Threat Intelligence platform, which provides exploit and vulnerability intelligence to help you prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities that matter.
  • Vulnerability Prioritization
    Prioritize vulnerabilities that matter based on the threat landscape and defer vulnerabilities that don't.
  • Early Warning System
    Real-time alerting of changes in the vulnerability landscape so that you can take action before the attacks start.