Overview
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system has recently identified an alarming vulnerability, CVE-2025-32880, affecting COROS PACE 3 devices. This vulnerability exposes the devices to potential system compromise and data leakage due to the use of unencrypted communication during the firmware file download process. As a result, cyber threats such as sniffing and machine-in-the-middle attacks become a real and present danger for users of these devices. Given the increasing reliance on smart devices in our day-to-day lives, such vulnerabilities can have far-reaching consequences, impacting user privacy, data integrity, and overall system security.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-32880
Severity: Critical (9.8)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
COROS PACE 3 | Up to 3.0808.0
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability arises from the COROS PACE 3 device’s implementation of a function to connect to a WLAN. When the device is connected to a WLAN, it initiates the download of firmware files via HTTP. However, this communication is not encrypted, leaving it exposed to malicious third-party actors. These threat actors can exploit the lack of encryption to launch sniffing or machine-in-the-middle attacks, potentially intercepting, modifying, or injecting malicious payloads into the data being transmitted. This could lead to a system compromise or data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
Given the nature of the vulnerability, an attacker could potentially exploit it by sniffing the network traffic between the COROS PACE 3 device and the server. Here is a conceptual example of how this might occur using a simple packet capture tool:
tcpdump -i eth0 'port http' -vIn this example, the attacker uses tcpdump to monitor all HTTP traffic on the network interface ‘eth0’. This allows them to capture and analyze unencrypted firmware file downloads from the vulnerable device.