CVE-2026-20045
9.8, critical Known exploitedCisco Unified Communications Products Code Injection Vulnerability
- CVSS
- 9.8, critical critical CVSS v3.1
- EPSS, next 30 days
- 5% higher than 91.4% of scored CVEs
- Exploitation
- Confirmed in the wild
- Published
- 21 Jan 20268 months ago
Known exploited
CISA added this to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog on 21 Jan 2026. US federal agencies had to remediate by 11 Feb 2026, a deadline that has passed.
Required action. Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
Description
A vulnerability in Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM), Cisco Unified Communications Manager Session Management Edition (Unified CM SME), Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM & Presence Service (Unified CM IM&P), Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Webex Calling Dedicated Instance could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system of an affected device. This vulnerability is due to improper validation of user-supplied input in HTTP requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a sequence of crafted HTTP requests to the web-based management interface of an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to obtain user-level access to the underlying operating system and then elevate privileges to root. Note: Cisco has assigned this security advisory a Security Impact Rating (SIR) of Critical rather than High as the score indicates. The reason is that exploitation of this vulnerability could result in an attacker elevating privileges to root.
Details
- Vendor
- Cisco
- Product
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager
- Weakness
- CWE-94 (opens in a new tab)
- Status
- Analyzed
- Updated
- 17 Jun 2026
- Assigner
- psirt@cisco.com
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References 2
The kind is read from NVD's tags where present and from the shape of the URL otherwise, so treat it as a hint.
Other Cisco CVEs
Every Cisco CVE we holdSame vendor in what we hold, not a known link between the flaws.
- CVE-2026-76519 Cisco Secure Email Gateway Relative Path Traversal Vulnerability KEV EPSS 2% 9.8, critical
- CVE-2026-76504 Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Hex Encoding Vulnerability KEV EPSS 2% 9.8, critical
- CVE-2026-76460 Cisco Identity Services Engine Incorrect Use of Privileged APIs Vulnerability KEV EPSS 14% 10, critical
- CVE-2026-76461 Cisco Secure Email Gateway SQL Injection Vulnerability KEV EPSS 30% 9.8, critical
- CVE-2026-20349 Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Heap Inspection Vulnerability KEV EPSS 1% 8.6, high
- CVE-2026-20316 Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Use of Hard-coded Password Vulnerability KEV EPSS 35% 5.3, medium
- CVE-2026-20262 Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Directory or Path Traversal Vulnerability KEV EPSS 28% 6.5, medium
- CVE-2026-20245 Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output Vulnerability KEV EPSS 25% 7.8, high
Beyond this page
Is CVE-2026-20045 in your network?
This page tells you how dangerous CVE-2026-20045 is out there. Whether it sits on one of your devices, only a scan of your own network can tell. That is what our systems do, every day, for the companies we protect.
CVE-2026-20045 is in the CISA catalogue of exploited vulnerabilities: attackers are already exploiting it.
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EXYS7600 OCELOT
Find it before attackers do
Ocelot scans your network on a schedule and reports every vulnerability it finds by its CVE identifier, with its CVSS score and how many of your hosts are affected. A finding like CVE-2026-20045 comes with the devices to patch.
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EXYS7950 KONDRA
Detect it if it's exploited
Until the patch is applied, Kondra monitors your network, events and endpoints in real time. It keeps an inventory of the software installed on every endpoint, and its anomaly detection rules flag what an attacker does once inside.
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Assembled from the NVD 2.0 API, the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog and FIRST EPSS. Scores are as of our last collection on 17 Oct 2026, not the live upstream state.