CVE-2020-13594 — The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) controller implementation in Espressif ESP-IDF 4

The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) controller implementation in Espressif ESP-IDF 4.2 and earlier (for ESP32 devices) does not properly restrict the channel map field of the connection request packet on reception, allowing attackers in radio range to cause a denial of service (crash)

01What is this vulnerability?

The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) controller implementation in Espressif ESP-IDF 4.2 and earlier (for ESP32 devices) does not properly restrict the channel map field of the connection request packet on reception, allowing attackers in radio range to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted packet.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2020-08-31T14:58:25.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-04T12:25:16.208Z

09References

• asset-group.github.io — https://asset-group.github.io/disclosures/sweyntooth/
• asset-group.github.io — https://asset-group.github.io/cves.html
• github.com — https://github.com/espressif/esp32-bt-lib