Actively exploited in the wild
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
Cisco — Catalyst SD-WAN · Listed in the CISA KEV since 2026-05-14. This indicates confirmed attacks in production environments.
Required action: Please adhere to CISA’s guidelines to assess exposure and mitigate risks associated with Cisco SD-WAN devices as outlined in CISA’s Emergency Directive 26-03 (URL listed below in Notes) and CISA’s Hunt & Hardening Guidance for Cisco SD-WAN Devices (URL listed below in Notes). Adhere to the applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are not available.
CVE-2026-20182
CriticalCVSS 10.0KEVExploitation Probability (EPSS)
Very high risk100th percentile — higher than 100% of all known CVEs
Summary
CVE-2026-20182 identifies an issue with the authentication mechanism in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller, Manager, and Validator that allows an unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication and gain administrative privileges. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted requests to the system.
Risk Assessment
Organizations using affected systems may be exposed to unauthorized access to critical network resources, potentially leading to serious security breaches and loss of control over network configuration.
Recommendation
It is recommended to immediately apply available patches and conduct a system audit to detect and mitigate risks associated with this vulnerability.
Original NVD description (English source)
May 2026: This security advisory provides the details and fix information for a vulnerability that was discovered and fixed after the was disclosed in February 2026. This new advisory is for a new vulnerability in the control connection handshaking. The section of this advisory includes Show Control Connections guidance to help with system checks. A vulnerability in the peering authentication in 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 unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication and obtain administrative privileges on an affected system. This vulnerability exists because the peering authentication mechanism in an affected system is not working properly. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted requests to the affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to log in to an affected Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller as an internal, high-privileged, non-root user account. Using this account, the attacker could access NETCONF, which would then allow the attacker to manipulate network configuration for the SD-WAN fabric.