IBM Support

Security Bulletin: IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge is vulnerable to multiple Base OS issues

Security Bulletin


Summary

IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge is vulnerable to multiple Base OS issues. We have updated the base image used by our Speech Services and the following vulnerabilities have been addressed. Please read the details for remediation below.

Vulnerability Details

CVEID:   CVE-2021-3572
DESCRIPTION:   A flaw was found in python-pip in the way it handled Unicode separators in git references. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to install a different revision on a repository. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data integrity. This is fixed in python-pip version 21.1.
CWE:   CWE-20: Improper Input Validation
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   4.5
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N)

CVEID:   CVE-2021-4217
DESCRIPTION:   A flaw was found in unzip. The vulnerability occurs due to improper handling of Unicode strings, which can lead to a null pointer dereference. This flaw allows an attacker to input a specially crafted zip file, leading to a crash or code execution.
CWE:   CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   3.3
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)

CVEID:   CVE-2022-0529
DESCRIPTION:   A flaw was found in Unzip. The vulnerability occurs during the conversion of a wide string to a local string that leads to a heap of out-of-bound write. This flaw allows an attacker to input a specially crafted zip file, leading to a crash or code execution.
CWE:   CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   7.8
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

CVEID:   CVE-2022-0530
DESCRIPTION:   A flaw was found in Unzip. The vulnerability occurs during the conversion of a wide string to a local string that leads to a heap of out-of-bound write. This flaw allows an attacker to input a specially crafted zip file, leading to a crash or code execution.
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   7.8
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

CVEID:   CVE-2022-33070
DESCRIPTION:   Protobuf-c v1.4.0 was discovered to contain an invalid arithmetic shift via the function parse_tag_and_wiretype in protobuf-c/protobuf-c.c. This vulnerability allows attackers to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via unspecified vectors.
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   5.3
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)

CVEID:   CVE-2023-39804
DESCRIPTION:   In GNU tar before 1.35, mishandled extension attributes in a PAX archive can lead to an application crash in xheader.c.
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   5.5
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

CVEID:   CVE-2024-7531
DESCRIPTION:   Calling `PK11_Encrypt()` in NSS using CKM_CHACHA20 and the same buffer for input and output can result in plaintext on an Intel Sandy Bridge processor. In Firefox this only affects the QUIC header protection feature when the connection is using the ChaCha20-Poly1305 cipher suite. The most likely outcome is connection failure, but if the connection persists despite the high packet loss it could be possible for a network observer to identify packets as coming from the same source despite a network path change. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 129, Firefox ESR < 115.14, and Firefox ESR < 128.1.
CWE:   CWE-367: Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
CVSS Source:   IBM X-Force
CVSS Base score:   6.5
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-1795
DESCRIPTION:   During an address list folding when a separating comma ends up on a folded line and that line is to be unicode-encoded then the separator itself is also unicode-encoded. Expected behavior is that the separating comma remains a plan comma. This can result in the address header being misinterpreted by some mail servers.
CWE:   CWE-116: Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output
CVSS Source:   cna@python.org
CVSS Base score:   2.3
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-4516
DESCRIPTION:   There is an issue in CPython when using `bytes.decode("unicode_escape", error="ignore|replace")`. If you are not using the "unicode_escape" encoding or an error handler your usage is not affected. To work-around this issue you may stop using the error= handler and instead wrap the bytes.decode() call in a try-except catching the DecodeError.
CWE:   CWE-416: Use After Free
CVSS Source:   cna@python.org
CVSS Base score:   5.9
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-45582
DESCRIPTION:   GNU Tar through 1.35 allows file overwrite via directory traversal in crafted TAR archives, with a certain two-step process. First, the victim must extract an archive that contains a ../ symlink to a critical directory. Second, the victim must extract an archive that contains a critical file, specified via a relative pathname that begins with the symlink name and ends with that critical file's name. Here, the extraction follows the symlink and overwrites the critical file. This bypasses the protection mechanism of "Member name contains '..'" that would occur for a single TAR archive that attempted to specify the critical file via a ../ approach. For example, the first archive can contain "x -> ../../../../../home/victim/.ssh" and the second archive can contain x/authorized_keys. This can affect server applications that automatically extract any number of user-supplied TAR archives, and were relying on the blocking of traversal. This can also affect software installation processes in which "tar xf" is run more than once (e.g., when installing a package can automatically install two dependencies that are set up as untrusted tarballs instead of official packages). NOTE: the official GNU Tar manual has an otherwise-empty directory for each "tar xf" in its Security Rules of Thumb; however, third-party advice leads users to run "tar xf" more than once into the same directory.
CWE:   CWE-24: Path Traversal: '../filedir'
CVSS Source:   cve@mitre.org
CVSS Base score:   4.1
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-48964
DESCRIPTION:   ping in iputils before 20250602 allows a denial of service (application error in adaptive ping mode or incorrect data collection) via a crafted ICMP Echo Reply packet, because a zero timestamp can lead to large intermediate values that have an integer overflow when squared during statistics calculations. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2025-47268 (that fix was only about timestamp calculations, and it did not account for a specific scenario where the original timestamp in the ICMP payload is zero).
CWE:   CWE-190: Integer Overflow or Wraparound
CVSS Source:   cve@mitre.org
CVSS Base score:   6.5
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-59375
DESCRIPTION:   libexpat in Expat before 2.7.2 allows attackers to trigger large dynamic memory allocations via a small document that is submitted for parsing.
CWE:   CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
CVSS Source:   cve@mitre.org
CVSS Base score:   7.5
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-6069
DESCRIPTION:   The html.parser.HTMLParser class had worse-case quadratic complexity when processing certain crafted malformed inputs potentially leading to amplified denial-of-service.
CWE:   CWE-1333: Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity
CVSS Source:   cna@python.org
CVSS Base score:   4.3
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)

CVEID:   CVE-2025-8291
DESCRIPTION:   The 'zipfile' module would not check the validity of the ZIP64 End of Central Directory (EOCD) Locator record offset value would not be used to locate the ZIP64 EOCD record, instead the ZIP64 EOCD record would be assumed to be the previous record in the ZIP archive. This could be abused to create ZIP archives that are handled differently by the 'zipfile' module compared to other ZIP implementations. Remediation maintains this behavior, but checks that the offset specified in the ZIP64 EOCD Locator record matches the expected value.
CWE:   CWE-1285: Improper Validation of Specified Index, Position, or Offset in Input
CVSS Source:   cna@python.org
CVSS Base score:   4.3
CVSS Vector:   (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)

Affected Products and Versions

Affected Product(s)Version(s)
IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge 4.0.0 - 5.2.2

 

Remediation/Fixes

Product(s)Version(s)Remediation/Fix/Instructions
IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge5.3The fix in 5.3 applies to all versions listed (4.0.0-5.2.2). Version 5.3 can be downloaded and installed from: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data

 

Workarounds and Mitigations

None

Get Notified about Future Security Bulletins

References

Off

Acknowledgement

Change History

17 Dec 2025: Initial Publication

*The CVSS Environment Score is customer environment specific and will ultimately impact the Overall CVSS Score. Customers can evaluate the impact of this vulnerability in their environments by accessing the links in the Reference section of this Security Bulletin.

Disclaimer

According to the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is an "industry open standard designed to convey vulnerability severity and help to determine urgency and priority of response." IBM PROVIDES THE CVSS SCORES ""AS IS"" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. CUSTOMERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ANY ACTUAL OR POTENTIAL SECURITY VULNERABILITY. In addition to other efforts to address potential vulnerabilities, IBM periodically updates the record of components contained in our product offerings. As part of that effort, if IBM identifies previously unidentified packages in a product/service inventory, we address relevant vulnerabilities regardless of CVE date. Inclusion of an older CVEID does not demonstrate that the referenced product has been used by IBM since that date, nor that IBM was aware of a vulnerability as of that date. We are making clients aware of relevant vulnerabilities as we become aware of them. "Affected Products and Versions" referenced in IBM Security Bulletins are intended to be only products and versions that are supported by IBM and have not passed their end-of-support or warranty date. Thus, failure to reference unsupported or extended-support products and versions in this Security Bulletin does not constitute a determination by IBM that they are unaffected by the vulnerability. Reference to one or more unsupported versions in this Security Bulletin shall not create an obligation for IBM to provide fixes for any unsupported or extended-support products or versions.

Document Location

Worldwide

[{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU048","label":"IBM Software"},"Product":{"code":"SSK9BC","label":"IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF040","label":"RedHat OpenShift"}],"Version":"4.0.0-5.2.2","Edition":"All","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB76","label":"Data Platform"}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
17 December 2025

Initial Publish date:
17 December 2025

UID

ibm17255141