Ethical Hacking News
The Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) has been found to have a critical flaw that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to access sensitive information on the affected system. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-20316, carries a CVSS score of 5.3 and is actively being exploited. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has urged customers to upgrade to a fixed software release immediately in order to remediate this critical flaw.
CISA has added a critical flaw in the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) to its KEV catalog, tracked as CVE-2026-20316, with a CVSS score of 5.3. The flaw allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to authenticate using a built-in low-privileged account, providing access to sensitive information. Cisco confirms the vulnerability had been actively exploited as early as July 2026 and urges customers to upgrade to a fixed software release immediately. Administrators can check for exploitation by running the command cat /var/log/messages | grep license in expert mode, and should contact TAC for recovery assistance if compromised. Federal agencies are required to address this vulnerability by the due date to protect their networks against attacks.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has recently added a critical flaw in the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. This vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20316, carries a CVSS score of 5.3, indicating that it has high severity and high impact potential.
The flaw is situated within the web interface of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) Software and allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to authenticate using a built-in low-privileged account. This provides the attacker with access to sensitive information stored on the affected system. Furthermore, if the FMC management interface is not exposed to the public internet, the attack surface can be reduced.
However, in a highly concerning turn of events, Cisco confirmed that this vulnerability had been actively exploited as early as July 2026. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) strongly urges customers to upgrade to a fixed software release immediately in order to remediate this critical flaw.
Administrators can check for exploitation by running the command cat /var/log/messages | grep license in expert mode. If the logs contain references to /var/tmp/license.tmp, the device may have been compromised. Cisco advises organizations that suspect exploitation to contact TAC for recovery assistance and immediately rotate all user credentials, cryptographic keys, and certificates, as the vulnerability has been actively exploited.
According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, federal agencies are required to address this identified vulnerability by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog.
Experts also recommend that private organizations review the catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure.
Furthermore, U.S. CISA has added Arista VeloCloud Orchestrator and Fortinet FortiOS flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog as well. This highlights the importance of staying up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates for all network systems.
In addition to this vulnerability, the article mentions that the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) flaw has been a topic of discussion in various security-related news outlets recently. It also points out several other recent cyber incidents including hackers striking Minnesota water utilities, one plant briefly offline; ShinyHunters claiming Ernst & Young data breach, threatening to leak stolen data; and several others.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/The-Cisco-Secure-Firewall-Management-Center-FMC-Flaw-A-Critical-Vulnerability-Exposed-by-CISA-ehn.shtml
https://securityaffairs.com/196289/security/u-s-cisa-adds-a-cisco-secure-firewall-management-center-fmc-flaw-to-its-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog.html
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20316
https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2026-20316/
Published: Thu Jul 30 05:53:02 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
