Ethical Hacking News
Cisco has issued a warning about an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in their SD-WAN network management software, which is being actively exploited in attacks to gain unauthorized access and escalate privileges.
Cisco has issued a warning about an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in their SD-WAN network management software (CVE-2026-20245). The vulnerability allows local attackers with low privileges to execute arbitrary commands as root, potentially leading to command injection attacks. Customers are advised to upgrade to the software fixed for CVE-2026-20182 on May 14, but no patches have been released yet for CVE-2026-20245. The exploitation of this zero-day flaw highlights the importance of keeping software up-to-date and patched.
Cisco has issued a warning about an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in their SD-WAN network management software, which is being actively exploited in attacks to gain unauthorized access and escalate privileges. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20245, impacts all deployment types of the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, including On-Prem Deployment, Cisco SD-WAN Cloud-Pro, Cisco SD-WAN Cloud (Cisco Managed), and Cisco SD-WAN for Government (FedRAMP).
The issue stems from insufficient validation of user-supplied input, which allows local attackers with low privileges to execute arbitrary commands as root. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a crafted file to the affected system, potentially leading to command injection attacks on an affected system and elevating their privileges as the root user.
According to Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT), they became aware of the exploitation in June after receiving reports from Google Cloud cybersecurity subsidiary Mandiant. The team shared indicators of compromise (IOCs) with admins, advising them to check their SD-WAN /var/log/scripts.log file for attempts to upload tenant configuration data to vSmart controllers.
The vulnerability was previously tagged by CISA as actively exploited in attacks, highlighting the severity of the issue. While Cisco has not yet released patches for CVE-2026-20245, they advised customers to upgrade to the software fixed for CVE-2026-20182 on May 14. This is the third such vulnerability in recent months, following CVE-2026-20133 and CVE-2026-20127.
The exploitation of this zero-day flaw highlights the importance of keeping software up-to-date and patched. Security teams must test every layer before attackers do, as demonstrated by CISA's warning about 90 Cisco vulnerabilities being abused in the wild over the last several years. The Picus whitepaper emphasizes the need for breach and attack simulation tests to ensure SIEM and EDR rules are effective in detecting threats.
In conclusion, the unpatched SD-WAN zero-day exploit highlights the growing concern for enterprise security. It is essential for organizations to prioritize software patching and take proactive measures to protect against such vulnerabilities.
Cisco has issued a warning about an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in their SD-WAN network management software, which is being actively exploited in attacks to gain unauthorized access and escalate privileges.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/Cisco-SD-WAN-Zero-Day-Exploit-A-Growing-Concern-for-Enterprise-Security-ehn.shtml
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-cisco-sd-wan-flaw-exploited-in-zero-day-attacks-to-gain-root/
https://www.securityweek.com/cisco-warns-of-7th-sd-wan-zero-day-exploited-in-2026/
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20245
https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2026-20245/
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20182
https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2026-20182/
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20133
https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2026-20133/
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20127
https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2026-20127/
Published: Fri Jun 5 02:39:39 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M