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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager
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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager

Cisco's SD-WAN platform; four CVEs KEV-listed since April 2026, most of any vendor this quarter.

CISA gave US federal agencies three days, from 20 to 23 April 2026, to patch three exploited flaws in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager. A fourth, a PATH-traversal bug, joined the exploited list on 29 June.

Last refreshed: 12 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic

Key Question

Why did CISA give federal agencies only three days to patch Cisco SD-WAN Manager?

Timeline for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager

#14 30 Sept

Became Cisco's 100th KEV entry on 30 September

Cybersecurity: Threats and Defences: Cisco reaches 100 entries on CISA's list
#9 29 Jun

Carried the path-traversal flaw

Cybersecurity: Threats and Defences: Cisco tops a five-vendor KEV batch
#3 6 May
#2 20 Apr

CISA gives Cisco SD-WAN three days to patch

Cybersecurity: Threats and Defences
View full timeline →

Background

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager is the central management plane for Cisco's software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) products. Enterprises and governments use it to set policy for, configure and monitor connectivity across many branch sites. Because it orchestrates the whole network, a compromise could let an attacker reconfigure branch routing, Intercept traffic or move across the WAN fabric.

On 20 April 2026 CISA added three Catalyst SD-WAN Manager flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalogue at once: CVE-2026-20122 (API privilege escalation), CVE-2026-20133 (sensitive information exposure) and CVE-2026-20128 (insecure password storage). Federal agencies had until 23 April to fix them, a three-day window that signals confirmed exploitation. Cisco issued patches for all three. The listing landed while Cisco's ASA and Firepower firewalls were already under scrutiny for the separate FIRESTARTER implant, so organisations running both product lines faced two remediation efforts at once.

CISA added a fourth SD-WAN Manager flaw, CVE-2026-20262, a path-traversal bug, on 29 June 2026. Cisco as a whole reached 100 KEV entries on 30 September, the second vendor to do so after Microsoft.

Common Questions
Why did CISA give only three days to patch Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager?
CISA's three-day remediation Deadline (20-23 April 2026) for three Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager CVEs indicates the agency believes active exploitation is underway. The KEV programme uses shorter deadlines for vulnerabilities with confirmed in-the-wild exploitation, with three days representing an emergency tempo reserved for the most urgent cases.Source: CISA KEV catalogue
What are the Cisco SD-WAN Manager vulnerabilities CISA added to the KEV in April 2026?
Three CVEs were added simultaneously on 20 April 2026: CVE-2026-20122 (API privilege escalation), CVE-2026-20133 (sensitive information exposure), and CVE-2026-20128 (insecure password storage). All three affect Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager and had a federal remediation Deadline of 23 April 2026.Source: CISA KEV catalogue
How is the Cisco SD-WAN Manager vulnerability different from the FIRESTARTER Cisco ASA attack?
The SD-WAN Manager CVEs and FIRESTARTER affect different Cisco product lines with different adversary profiles. FIRESTARTER is a nation-state boot-sequence implant on ASA/Firepower perimeter firewalls; the SD-WAN Manager CVEs represent opportunistic exploitation of a network management platform used for branch connectivity. Both require urgent remediation but through different methods.Source: CISA KEV catalogue / CISA AR26-113A
Did Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager have another vulnerability added to KEV after April 2026?
Yes. CISA added CVE-2026-20262, a PATH-traversal flaw, to the KEV catalogue on 29 June 2026, a fourth Catalyst SD-WAN Manager CVE within roughly ten weeks of the April batch of three.Source: CISA KEV catalogue
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