Anti Rollback bypass with physical access and TOCTOU attack

published 2024-03-25 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2024-25308

cvss: 6.1; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 13%
public exploits: 0; none known

ESP-IDF is the development framework for Espressif SoCs supported on Windows, Linux and macOS. A Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) vulnerability was discovered in the implementation of the ESP-IDF bootloader which could allow an attacker with physical access to flash of the device to bypass anti-rollback protection. Anti-rollback prevents rollback to application with security version lower than one programmed in eFuse of chip. This attack can allow to boot past (passive) application partition having lower security version of the same device even in the presence of the flash encryption scheme. The attack requires carefully modifying the flash contents after the anti-rollback checks have been performed by the bootloader (before loading the application). The vulnerability is fixed in 4.4.7 and 5.2.1.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 links 7

espressif esp-idf 4.4.7, 5.2.1

github.com/espressif/esp-idf@3305cb4 commit
github.com/espressif/esp-idf@4c95aa4 commit
github.com/espressif/esp-idf@534e3ad commit
github.com/espressif/esp-idf@7003f1e commit
github.com/espressif/esp-idf@b2cdc06 commit
github.com/espressif/esp-idf@c33b9e1 commit
github.com/espressif/esp-idf@f327ddf commit

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 2 y ago (2024-03-25)

Exploit prediction

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	6.1	CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
NVD	3.1	5.7	CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected products

espressif esp-idf

Classification

Weakness

CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2024-28183
NVD CVE-2024-28183

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.

Summary