EP. 160: Critical Cisco Firewall CVE-2026-20079 Exploited for Root Access

The Digital Warfare Podcast · Sep 10, 2026 · 5m · transcript

Summary

Cisco has confirmed active exploitation of CVE-2026-20079, a maximum-severity authentication-bypass vulnerability affecting Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. The flaw has a CVSS score of 10.0 and can allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to send crafted HTTP requests, bypass authentication and execute scripts and commands resulting in root access to the underlying operating system.

Cisco originally disclosed the vulnerability in March but updated the advisory on September 9 to state that its PSIRT became aware of active exploitation during August. Cisco says there are no…