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.
CVE-2002-20001
Score 7.5 from GitHub Security Advisory (severity: HIGH) published 2022-04-21. NVD baseline CVSS 7.5; sources differ by 0.0.
- High severity, but no confirmed exploitation yet
No vendor fix yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for a patch.
- CVSS v3
- 7.5
- EG Score
- 7.5(medium)
- EPSS
- 97.5%
- KEV
- Not listed
Published
November 11, 2021
Last Modified
August 22, 2025
References (26)
- cve@mitrehttps://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-506569.pdf
- cve@mitrehttps://dheatattack.com
- cve@mitrehttps://dheatattack.gitlab.io/
- cve@mitrehttps://github.com/Balasys/dheater
- cve@mitrehttps://github.com/mozilla/ssl-config-generator/issues/162
- cve@mitrehttps://gitlab.com/dheatattack/dheater
- cve@mitrehttps://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10374117
- cve@mitrehttps://support.f5.com/csp/article/K83120834
- cve@mitrehttps://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/alert/ARUBA-PSA-2022-004.txt
- cve@mitrehttps://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2022/10/21/tls-groups-configuration/
- cve@mitrehttps://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/qdoosy/server_overload_by_enforcing_dhe_key_exchange/
- cve@mitrehttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anton-Stiglic-2/publication/2401745_Security_Issues_in_the_Diffie-Hellman_Key_Agreement_Protocol
- cve@mitrehttps://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000020510
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-506569.pdf
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://dheatattack.com
Weakness Classification(1)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 4× in last 7d / 23× in last 30d)
Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.
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- 2026-05-26 07:40 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-05-26 07:40 UTCGHSA enrichment
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- 2026-05-24 16:42 UTCEPSS rescore
Publicly available exploits
(1 reference)Working exploit code is in the public domain (1 GitHub PoC). Defenders should treat patch urgency accordingly — public PoCs typically lead to mass-exploitation within 24-72 hours.
- GitHub PoCc0r0n3r/dheaterFirst seen 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 of the original GitLab project)
Open source ↗
Related CVEs(same CWE)
Same CWE
10 shownCWE-400
Frequently asked(5)
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