12OCT

Two 9.8 Check Point flaws hit firewalls

2 min read

10:55UTC

CISA listed two Check Point flaws scoring 9.8 on 22 September, one in VPN negotiation on Spark firewalls and one on management servers.

← Back to China alert puts old bugs on a 3-day clock Jump to analysis ↓

TechnologyAssessed

Key takeaway

Check Point's two September flaws need separate gateway and management updates to close.

Check Point had two flaws scoring 9.8 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) put on the US federal exploited-flaw catalogue on 22 September, with a 25 September deadline⁠¹. CVE-2026-85102 lets an attacker with no login run code on a Security Gateway or Spark firewall through certificate data sent while a virtual private network (VPN) connection is negotiated. Check Point says it was exploited on Spark firewalls from 12 September⁠². That makes it the company's second exploited VPN flaw of 2026, after June's authentication bypass in its Remote Access VPN; a SmartConsole login flaw was also listed in July.

The second, CVE-2026-93616, gives script execution on Check Point management and log servers over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 19009. The vendor says it was used against a "handful of customers"⁠³.

The R81.20 gateway fix is Take 166 and the management fix is Take 170. A site that patched its gateways for the VPN flaw in mid-September still had its management server open until it took the second update.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Check Point is an Israeli company that makes firewalls, the devices that guard the boundary between a company's network and the internet. Many also let staff connect from home through a virtual private network (VPN). Two flaws were found. One lets an attacker take over the firewall by sending booby-trapped data while setting up a VPN connection. The other lets an attacker take over the separate server that controls all of a company's firewall rules. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed both were being used in attacks and gave government departments three days to fix them.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Spark firewalls are sold to branch offices and small businesses, where Remote Access VPN with certificate authentication is often switched on and left at defaults. Gateways in DAIP or Large Scale VPN communities enable the vulnerable code path automatically, so many owners had exposure they never chose.

Management and log servers are frequently run by outsourced security providers who need to reach them remotely. Port 19009 open to the internet is a convenience for those providers that turns one flaw into control of every firewall policy the server manages.

Check Point releases fixes as numbered Jumbo Takes per branch, and the gateway fix (R81.20 Take 166) sits below the management fix (Take 170).

What could happen next?

Risk
A compromised management server lets attackers rewrite firewall policy across every gateway it controls, so one exposed server can open many networks.
Opportunity
Check Point gains an argument for moving customers to hosted management, which it fixed before telling anyone.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: In May 2024 Check Point disclosed CVE-2024-24919, a Quantum Gateway flaw that let attackers read files including password hashes; incident responders at mnemonic traced exploitation back to 30 April. Check Point first framed it as attacks on old local accounts, before a code flaw was confirmed.

Counter-parallel: In October 2024 Fortinet's FortiManager flaw CVE-2024-47575 let attackers steal configurations from more than 50 central management servers, according to Mandiant. Fortinet warned customers privately before its public advisory, the reverse of the same-day public listing CISA gave Check Point.

No LivePatch exists or is planned for the management flaw, so every affected management server needs a full Jumbo installation and restart. For providers running Multi-Domain Management across many clients, that means a coordinated outage of policy pushes.

Check Point's quarterly results will show whether customers respond by moving management to Smart-1 Cloud, the hosted service that was fixed before disclosure.

Consensus view: Check Point's own articles sk1000117 and sk1000171 show two separate attack surfaces hit in the same fortnight: the gateway through VPN certificate handling, and the management and log plane through TCP port 19009. Its workarounds, explicit rules for UDP 500 and 4500 from known peers and restricting port 19009 to trusted addresses, confirm both were exposed by default configuration rather than exotic set-ups.

Counter-view: Check Point, headquartered in Tel Aviv, describes the management-server flaw as exploited against a 'handful of customers' and says Smart-1 Cloud was already fixed, implying limited reach. CISA nonetheless gave it the same three-day clock as the gateway flaw, judging exposure by what an attacker gains from a management server rather than by observed victim counts.

Key tension: How many Check Point management servers are reachable from the internet on port 19009, which no vendor or government figure has yet answered.

Sources:CISA·Check Point·Check Point

Mentions:Check Point →CISA →Known Exploited Vulnerabilities →Fortinet →Mandiant →Common Vulnerability Scoring System →Tel Aviv →CVE-2026-85102 →CVE-2026-93616 →SmartConsole →FortiManager →

First Reported In

Update #14 · China alert puts old bugs on a 3-day clock

CISA· 12 Oct 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

VPN zero-day open a month pre-patch

Check Point's June VPN zero-day preceded a second exploited VPN flaw in September.

Occurred 8 Jun 2026

Read story →

This Event

Two 9.8 Check Point flaws hit firewalls

The gateway and the console that manages it needed separate updates, so one patch round left a site half fixed.

Different Perspectives

ENISA

ENISA's 22 September threat report found only 23.8 per cent of NoName057(16)'s assessed claims were confirmed by independent availability checks, though the group produced 48 per cent of ideology-driven activity. The agency's numbers show public administration taking 31.8 per cent of attacks, mostly ideological DDoS.

LKA Hamburg

Hamburg's State Criminal Police Office led the operation that took the KillSec leak site on 30 September, with ten countries, Europol and Eurojust. Investigators link the group to around 1,000 suspected attacks, at least 70 in Germany, and the seizure blocks access to at least 110 terabytes of victims' data.

ASOS

ASOS said an unauthorised party reached names and contact details on third-party platforms after obtaining an employee's credentials by impersonating a trusted contact. It said it does not believe payment cards or account passwords were affected, and is investigating.

Check Point

Check Point updated its advisory on 20 September to say its 9.8-rated VPN certificate flaw had been exploited on Spark firewalls since 12 September, five days after the advisory first appeared, and shipped fixes including R81.20 Take 166. It told customers using only pre-shared-key VPN communities they were not exposed.

Japan's National Police Agency

Japan's National Police Agency and National Cybersecurity Office signed advisory AA26-281A and published it on 9 October, naming SoftEther VPN, MicroScan and office-cli and indicators detected since January 2016. Tokyo says the evidence comes from several FBI criminal investigations and that it will deepen cooperation with allies.

CISA

CISA gave federal agencies three days to fix five flaws from 2015 to 2023 on the day the China advisory named Integrity Technology Group, and set the same clock on 34 of 43 September listings. It treats a named state-linked operation as reason enough to patch old software within the week.