Cisco has patched serious flaws in Identity Services Engine (ISE), the platform many organizations use to control who and what connects to their network. The most severe is a critical remote-code-execution bug that can give an attacker root-level control of the appliance. A second flaw, CVE-2026-20190, is an unauthenticated information-disclosure issue caused by weak authorization checks, letting a remote attacker pull sensitive data, including hashed credentials, that could fuel follow-on attacks and lateral movement. All versions of ISE and ISE-PIC are affected, though which flaws apply varies by release. Cisco has not reported active exploitation, but ISE sits at the heart of network access control.
Cisco has patched four critical vulnerabilities this week across Webex and Identity Services Engine (ISE). The standout flaw is CVE-2026-20184 in Cisco Webex Services with SSO integration via Control Hub - it allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to impersonate any user in the service due to incorrect certificate validation in the SSO flow. This is particularly dangerous for organizations using Webex with SAML and centralized identity management. Alongside it: CVE-2026-20180 and CVE-2026-20186 (both CVSS 9.9) affect Cisco ISE and ISE Passive Identity Connector, allowing authenticated attackers with even read-only admin credentials to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying OS and escalate to root. CVE-2026-20147 is a path traversal flaw in the same products. ISE versions before 3.2, plus 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5 branches are all affected. No workarounds - only software updates fix these. In single-node ISE deployments, exploitation can also knock the node offline, blocking network access for unauthenticated endpoints.
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