Espressif ESP-IDF up to 5.0.8/5.1.5/5.3.2/5.4.0 buffer overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Espressif ESP-IDF up to 5.0.8/5.1.5/5.3.2/5.4.0. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality. This manipulation causes buffer overflow. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2025-55297. The attack is only possible within the local network. No exploit exists. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Espressif ESP-IDF up to 5.0.8/5.1.5/5.3.2/5.4.0. It has been declared as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a buffer overflow vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-120. The product copies an input buffer to an output buffer without verifying that the size of the input buffer is less than the size of the output buffer, leading to a buffer overflow. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

ESF-IDF is the Espressif Internet of Things (IOT) Development Framework. The BluFi example bundled in ESP-IDF was vulnerable to memory overflows in two areas: Wi-Fi credential handling and Diffie–Hellman key exchange. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.4.1, 5.3.3, 5.1.6, and 5.0.9.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2025-55297 since 08/12/2025. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack needs to be initiated within the local network. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available.

Upgrading to version 5.0.9, 5.1.6, 5.3.3 or 5.4.1 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 12b7a9e6d78012ab9184b7ccdb5524364bf7e345 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at EUVD (EUVD-2025-25514). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Vendor

• Espressif

Name

• ESP-IDF

Version

• 5.0
• 5.0.0
• 5.0.1
• 5.0.2
• 5.0.3
• 5.0.4
• 5.0.5
• 5.0.6
• 5.0.7
• 5.0.8
• 5.1
• 5.1.0
• 5.1.1
• 5.1.2
• 5.1.3
• 5.1.4
• 5.1.5
• 5.2
• 5.3
• 5.3.0
• 5.3.1
• 5.3.2
• 5.4.0

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/

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Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

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