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Unscored Public exploit CVE-2002-20001 EUVD-2002-1979GHSA-jx4r-qc68-xjr5

The Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Protocol allows remote attackers (from the client side) to send arbitrary numbers that are actually not pu…

Published Nov 11, 2021 · Updated Feb 13, 2025 · 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.

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

openSUSE

Security tracker ↗
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Tumbleweed openssl-1_1 1.1.1m-4.1 openSUSE-SU-2024:11905-1
openSUSE Tumbleweed ssh-audit 3.2.0-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2024:13932-1

Public exploits

Exploit or proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability is publicly available, which lowers the bar for attackers. Treat it as a reason to patch sooner.

Third-party code, not reviewed by us. Public PoCs are sometimes fake or contain malware. Read the code first and run it only in an isolated lab, against systems you are authorised to test.

GitHub 2 repositories

  • c0r0n3r/dheater ★ 223 · Aug 31, 2021

    D(HE)ater is a proof of concept implementation of the D(HE)at attack (CVE-2002-20001) through which denial-of-service can be performed by enforcing the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. (read-only clone o…

  • itmaniac/dheat_dos_attack_poc ★ 0 · Jul 28, 2025

    POC for Testing the Existence of D(HE)at DOS Attack for (CVE-2002-20001)

Sources: PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit Framework, Exploit-DB — updated daily. Only links are listed; no exploit code is hosted here.

Advisories 10

References