CVE-2025-52471

/// Technical description

ESF-IDF is the Espressif Internet of Things (IOT) Development Framework. An integer underflow vulnerability has been identified in the ESP-NOW protocol implementation within the ESP Wi-Fi component of versions 5.4.1, 5.3.3, 5.2.5, and 5.1.6 of the ESP-IDF framework. This issue stems from insufficient validation of user-supplied data length in the packet receive function. Under certain conditions, this may lead to out-of-bounds memory access and may allow arbitrary memory write operations. On systems without a memory protection scheme, this behavior could potentially be used to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on the target device. In versions 5.4.2, 5.3.4, 5.2.6, and 5.1.6, ESP-NOW has added more comprehensive validation logic on user-supplied data length during packet reception to prevent integer underflow caused by negative value calculations. For ESP-IDF v5.3 and earlier, a workaround can be applied by validating that the `data_len` parameter received in the RX callback (register

/// Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

/// References