MLeap TensorFlow GraphDef native-crash PoC

This repository contains a proof-of-concept malicious .mleap file for a responsibly-disclosed vulnerability in combust/mleap (tested at commit 88de54dd4fb7720c7c56ff5c2b51cdec4353a128), reported via huntr's Model File Vulnerability program.

What this file is

tf_crash_poc.zip is a syntactically valid, standard-format .mleap bundle (built with MLeap's own BundleWriter, not hand-crafted) containing a single root tensorflow node whose embedded graph.pb is 0 bytes — a syntactically valid, trivially empty TensorFlow GraphDef protobuf message — and which declares zero input/output tensors and no target nodes.

What happens when you load it

import ml.combust.bundle.BundleFile
import ml.combust.mleap.runtime.MleapSupport._
import ml.combust.mleap.runtime.MleapContext.defaultContext
import ml.combust.mleap.runtime.frame.DefaultLeapFrame
import ml.combust.mleap.core.types.StructType

val bundle = BundleFile(new java.io.File("tf_crash_poc.zip")).loadMleapBundle().get
val transformer = bundle.root
val emptyFrame = DefaultLeapFrame(StructType(Seq()).get, Seq(ml.combust.mleap.runtime.frame.Row()))
transformer.transform(emptyFrame)   // <-- crashes the JVM here

Loading the bundle succeeds without error (MLeap performs no validation of the embedded graph bytes at load time). Running inference on it — the ordinary, expected way to use a loaded MLeap pipeline — triggers a native access violation inside TensorFlow's own C API:

#  A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#  EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x00007ffc6f92f3f7, ...
# The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code.

with the fault located precisely in TF_GraphImportGraphDef, called from ml.combust.mleap.tensorflow.TensorflowModel.getSessionFromFrozenGraph(). See verification-log.txt in this repository for the full, unmodified crash output and stack trace from the reporter's own reproduction, and the reporter's full write-up submitted via huntr for the complete technical analysis.

This is not a catchable Java exception — no try/catch(Throwable) at any level of a calling application can prevent the JVM process from terminating.

Scope note

This PoC is provided solely for the purpose of responsible vulnerability disclosure and reproduction by the mleap maintainers / huntr triage team. It is not intended for any other use.