diff --git a/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/lib/diff/util.ts b/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/lib/diff/util.ts
index 763afbecaf79e..f4c452499ee09 100644
--- a/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/lib/diff/util.ts
+++ b/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/lib/diff/util.ts
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@ export function deepEqual(lvalue: any, rvalue: any): boolean {
   }
   // allows a numeric 10 and a literal "10" to be equivalent;
   // this is consistent with CloudFormation.
-  if (((typeof lvalue === 'string') || (typeof rvalue === 'string')) && (parseFloat(lvalue) === parseFloat(rvalue))) {
+  if ((typeof lvalue === 'string' || typeof rvalue === 'string') &&
+      safeParseFloat(lvalue) === safeParseFloat(rvalue)) {
     return true;
   }
   if (typeof lvalue !== typeof rvalue) { return false; }
@@ -132,3 +133,20 @@ export function unionOf(lv: string[] | Set<string>, rv: string[] | Set<string>):
   }
   return new Array(...result);
 }
+
+/**
+ * A parseFloat implementation that does the right thing for
+ * strings like '0.0.0'
+ * (for which JavaScript's parseFloat() returns 0).
+ */
+function safeParseFloat(str: string): number {
+  const ret = parseFloat(str);
+  if (ret === 0) {
+    // if the str is exactly '0', that's OK;
+    // but parseFloat() also returns 0 for things like '0.0';
+    // in this case, return NaN, so we'll fall back to string comparison
+    return str === '0' ? ret : NaN;
+  } else {
+    return ret;
+  }
+}
diff --git a/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/test/diff-template.test.ts b/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/test/diff-template.test.ts
index 8110922a41790..bde05ef09056e 100644
--- a/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/test/diff-template.test.ts
+++ b/packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/test/diff-template.test.ts
@@ -375,6 +375,34 @@ test('adding and removing quotes from a numeric property causes no changes', ()
   expect(differences.resources.differenceCount).toBe(0);
 });
 
+test('versions are correctly detected as not numbers', () => {
+  const currentTemplate = {
+    Resources: {
+      ImageBuilderComponent: {
+        Type: 'AWS::ImageBuilder::Component',
+        Properties: {
+          Platform: 'Linux',
+          Version: '0.0.1',
+        },
+      },
+    },
+  };
+  const newTemplate = {
+    Resources: {
+      ImageBuilderComponent: {
+        Type: 'AWS::ImageBuilder::Component',
+        Properties: {
+          Platform: 'Linux',
+          Version: '0.0.2',
+        },
+      },
+    },
+  };
+
+  const differences = diffTemplate(currentTemplate, newTemplate);
+  expect(differences.resources.differenceCount).toBe(1);
+});
+
 test('single element arrays are equivalent to the single element in DependsOn expressions', () => {
   // GIVEN
   const currentTemplate = {