What is CVE-2017-2659?

CVE-2017-2659 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Dropbear SSH Project, classified under Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2019-03-21.

How severe is CVE-2017-2659?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.

Auth bypass in Dropbear SSH Project

CVE-2017-2659

It was found that dropbear before version 2013.59 with GSSAPI leaks whether given username is valid or invalid. When an invalid username is given, the GSSAPI authentication failure was incorrectly counted towards the maximum allowed number of password attempts.

Published 2019-03-21 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.015 (73.3th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 73rd percentile — 73.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.015 · newest: 0.015 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Dropbear SSH Project
[Unknown] Dropbear — versions fixed in 2013.59

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
secure.ucc.asn.au/hg/dropbear/rev/d7784616409a (Patch, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2017-2659?: CVE-2017-2659 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Dropbear SSH Project, classified under Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2019-03-21.
How severe is CVE-2017-2659?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.