CVE-2026-20245
HIGHCVE-2026-20245 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-116 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-06-09) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A vulnerability in the CLI of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller, formerly SD-WAN vSmart, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, formerly SD-WAN vManage, and Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Validator,…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-06-09. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-06-23.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2026-20245.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-20245 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A vulnerability in the CLI of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller, formerly SD-WAN vSmart, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, formerly SD-WAN vManage, and Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Validator, formerly SD-WAN vBond, could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root by supplying a crafted file to the affected system.
This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of user-supplied input. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a crafted file to the affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to perform command injection attacks on an affected system and elevate their privileges as the root user. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have netadmin privileges on the affected system. This would require valid credentials or exploitation of or . Cisco is not aware of successful exploitation by other methods. Cisco has observed limited cases where the exploitation of this bug resulted in a configuration change pushed to edge devices. Cisco recommends that customers upgrade to the fixed software that is documented in the that was published on May 14, 2026, and verify the configuration of the edge devices.
Affected Products
catalyst sd-wan managerciscosd-wan vsmart controllerciscoResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-20245 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-20245 in your dependencies?
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