CVE-2002-20001: Balasys Dheater

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 24.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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.

Affected products

  • Balasys Dheater: affected versions not specified
  • F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager: from 13.1.0, before 16.1.4 (fixed in 16.1.4); from 17.0.0, before 17.1.0 (fixed in 17.1.0)
  • F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Advanced Web Application Firewall: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Analytics: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Application Acceleration Manager: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Application Security Manager: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Application Visibility And Reporting: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Carrier-Grade Nat: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Ddos Hybrid Defender: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Domain Name System: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Edge Gateway: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Fraud Protection Service: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Link Controller: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Policy Enforcement Manager: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Service Proxy: version 1.6.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Webaccelerator: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IP Websafe: from 13.1.0, up to and including 17.1.2; version 17.5.0 only
  • F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management: from 8.0.0, up to and including 8.4.0; version 7.1.0 only
  • F5 f5os-A: from 1.3.0, up to and including 1.3.2; from 1.5.0, up to and including 1.5.3; version 1.8.0 only
  • F5 f5os-C: from 1.3.0, up to and including 1.3.2; from 1.6.0, up to and including 1.6.2; version 1.5.0 only; version 1.5.1 only; version 1.8.0 only; version 1.8.1 only
  • F5 Traffix Signaling Delivery Controller: version 5.1.0 only; version 5.2.0 only
  • and 5 more

Published 2021-11-11. Last modified 2026-09-23.