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Cisco · Auth bypass

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Hex Encoding Vulnerability

CVE-2026-76504

What this means

This is rated critical severity (9.8 out of 10). It is on the known-exploited catalogue, which means attacks using it have already been seen. Ask IT whether Cisco Catalyst Sd Wan Manager is in your estate, and treat that as the priority.

Full vendor 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.

Scoring and exploitation

9.8/ 10
CVSS 3.1 base scoreCritical

Exploitable over the network without any account, and no one has to click or open anything. High impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Exploitability

Longer bar: easier to attack

Attack vectorNetworkAV:N
Attack complexityLowAC:L
Privileges requiredNonePR:N
User interactionNoneUI:N
ScopeUnchangedS:U

Impact

Longer bar: more harm

ConfidentialityHighC:H
IntegrityHighI:H
AvailabilityHighA:H
Elevated attack likelihood (~38.9% in 30 days)Model estimate (): a probability signal, not confirmed exploitation
Exploited in the wild
Yes — confirmed exploitation (US CISA )
Not reported
Listed product
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager

Weaknesses

CWE-177

Affected products ()

  • Cisco Catalyst Sd Wan Manager
Show the raw CPE strings (2)
  • cpe:2.3:a:cisco:catalyst_sd-wan_manager:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:a:cisco:catalyst_sd-wan_manager:26.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References

2 links from the CVE record, grouped by site; the vendor's advisory comes first.