Your Beats Studio Buds could have been eavesdropping on you
Apple has quietly pushed a critical firmware update for Beats Studio Buds that closes a flaw allowing anyone nearby to listen through your earbuds' microphone. The bug, rated 8.8 out of 10 on the severity scale, sat in the wild for roughly a year before a patch arrived. If you own a pair, the fix has most likely already landed on your device.
The flaw
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-20701, lives inside the Bluetooth audio chip made by Airoha Systems — the silicon behind Beats Studio Buds and a wide range of earbuds from Jabra, Bose, and JBL. The flaw is a missing authentication check: a rogue device within Bluetooth range could impersonate a trusted accessory and bypass all pairing protections.
Security researchers Dennis Heinze and Frieder Steinmetz of ERNW demonstrated the attack at the TROOPERS 2025 conference in Germany. In a proof-of-concept, an attacker standing near a pair of searching or idle earbuds could redirect the microphone feed to their own device — capturing nearby conversations in real time. Theoretically, contact lists and call history could also be accessed, though The Hacker News — CVE-2025-20701 notes those attack chains are significantly harder to pull off.
The wider picture
Beats Studio Buds are not alone. Because Airoha chips power many audio brands, Jabra, Bose, and JBL devices share the same underlying exposure. On top of that, a separate vulnerability called WhisperPair is battering the industry. It targets Google Fast Pair — the quick-connect protocol built into Android — and affects an estimated hundreds of millions of devices. According to SecurityWeek — WhisperPair, researchers tested 17 devices from 10 brands, including Sony, Nothing, OnePlus, Google Pixel Buds Pro 2, JBL, Marshall, Jabra, Logitech, Soundcore, and Xiaomi — all vulnerable. The attack works within roughly 50 feet (about 14 meters) and can be executed in 10 to 15 seconds, with location tracking via Google's Find Hub also confirmed as a risk.
The certification failure makes this worse: multiple devices passed Google's own testing process despite carrying the flaw, undermining the trust consumers place in certified accessories.
What to do now
The Beats patch ships as firmware version 1B211 and installs automatically when your earbuds connect to an iPhone, iPad, or Mac — no manual steps needed. To confirm your version, open Bluetooth settings on your Apple device, tap the info icon next to your Beats, and check the firmware number. Android users pairing via Beats' own app should verify updates are available there too.
For WhisperPair-affected devices — Sony WH-1000XM series, Pixel Buds Pro 2, Nothing Ear models — no universal patch is available yet. The practical advice from security experts remains unchanged: turn Bluetooth off when you're not using it. It saves battery and closes the door on any attacker who needs to be standing right next to you to make this work.
