CVE-2019-15894: High severity espressif esp-idf vulnerability
An issue was discovered in Espressif ESP-IDF 2.x, 3.0.x through 3.0.9, 3.1.x through 3.1.6, 3.2.x through 3.2.3, and 3.3.x through 3.3.1. An attacker who uses fault injection to physically disrupt the ESP32 CPU can bypass the Secure Boot digest verification at startup, and boot unverified code from flash. The fault injection attack does not disable the Flash Encryption feature, so if the ESP32 is configured with the recommended combination of Secure Boot and Flash Encryption, then the impact is minimized. If the ESP32 is configured without Flash Encryption then successful fault injection allows arbitrary code execution. To protect devices with Flash Encryption and Secure Boot enabled against this attack, a firmware change must be made to permanently enable Flash Encryption in the field if it is not already permanently enabled.
Affected Software
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CVE-2019-15894?
CVE-2019-15894 is a vulnerability in Espressif ESP-IDF that allows an attacker to bypass the Secure Boot digest verification.
How does CVE-2019-15894 affect Espressif ESP-IDF?
CVE-2019-15894 affects versions 2.x, 3.0.x through 3.0.9, 3.1.x through 3.1.6, 3.2.x through 3.2.3, and 3.3.x through 3.3.1 of Espressif ESP-IDF.
What is the severity of CVE-2019-15894?
CVE-2019-15894 has a severity rating of 6.8 (high).
How can an attacker exploit CVE-2019-15894?
An attacker can exploit CVE-2019-15894 by using fault injection to physically disrupt the ESP32 CPU and bypass the Secure Boot digest verification at startup.
Is there a fix for CVE-2019-15894?
Espressif has released a security advisory and recommended upgrading to the latest version of ESP-IDF to mitigate CVE-2019-15894.