Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Hex Encoding Vulnerability

Why it is Red

• CVSS 9.8 critical
• Exploited in the wild (CISA KEV)
• Remotely exploitable without logging in
• On your watchlist: cisco

CISA required action

Apply mitigations in accordance with vendor instructions, ensuring compliance with CISA’s BOD 26-04 Prioritizing Security Updates Based on Risk (see URL in Notes) guidance and CISA’s “Forensics Triage Requirements” (see URL in Notes). Follow applicable BOD 26-04 guidance for cloud services or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable. Stakeholders are responsible for evaluating each asset's internet exposure and ensuring adherence to BOD 26-04 patching guidelines.

References

• https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sdwan-webauth-xr8beuuU
• https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2026-76504

Original description

A vulnerability in the API session-based authentication management of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access an affected system with privileges of the admin user. This vulnerability is due to improper handling of URI encoding in an HTTP request, which allows the request to bypass an authentication rule that is intended to restrict access to a specific API endpoint. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to the API of the affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to bypass authentication and gain access to the API as the admin user.