CVE-2002-20001
The Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Protocol allows remote attackers (from the client side) to send arbitrary numbers that are actually not…
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- mitre
Description
The Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Protocol allows remote attackers (from the client side) to send arbitrary numbers that are actually not public keys, and trigger expensive server-side DHE modular-exponentiation calculations, aka a D(HE)at or D(HE)ater attack. The client needs very little CPU resources and network bandwidth. The attack may be more disruptive in cases where a client can require a server to select its largest supported key size. The basic attack scenario is that the client must claim that it can only communicate with DHE, and the server must be configured to allow DHE.
Timeline
Published
- 3 years later
· 3 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 24.6% · top 2.1% of all CVEs (8 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Weakness
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References (13)
- https://github.com/Balasys/dheater (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anton-Stiglic-2/publication/2401745_Security_Issues_in_the_Diffie-Hellman_Key_Agreement_Protocol (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/qdoosy/server_overload_by_enforcing_dhe_key_exchange/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://github.com/mozilla/ssl-config-generator/issues/162 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-506569.pdf (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000020510 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2022/10/21/tls-groups-configuration/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/alert/ARUBA-PSA-2022-004.txt (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K83120834 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://dheatattack.com (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://gitlab.com/dheatattack/dheater (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://dheatattack.gitlab.io/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10374117 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2002-20001)Record last updated .