Resource exhaustion in Balasys Dheater

CVE-2002-20001

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.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

EPSS: 0.246 (97.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2002-20001?
CVE-2002-20001 is a high-severity vulnerability in Balasys Dheater, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2021-11-11.
How severe is CVE-2002-20001?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2002-20001 known to be exploited?
14 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.