Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition in ESP-IDF - CVE-2024-28183
Published: March 25, 2024 / Updated: May 13, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU131330
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Clear
CVE-ID: CVE-2024-28183
CWE-ID: CWE-367
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vendor: Espressif Systems
Affected software:
ESP-IDF
ESP-IDF
Detailed vulnerability description
The vulnerability allows an attacker with physical access to bypass anti-rollback protection.
The vulnerability exists due to a time-of-check time-of-use race condition in the ESP-IDF bootloader anti-rollback scheme when verifying and loading the application from flash. An attacker with physical access can carefully modify flash contents after the anti-rollback checks and before the application is loaded to bypass anti-rollback protection.
In the presence of flash encryption, exploitation can allow booting a past passive application partition with a lower security version from the same device.
How to mitigate CVE-2024-28183
Install security update from vendor's website.