Hackers Exploit Critical Cisco Secure Email Gateway Vulnerability in the Wild to Run Malicious Code
Cisco warns attackers actively exploit zero-day CVE-2026-76461 in Secure Email Gateway, gaining unauthenticated root command execution via crafted emails.
Cisco PSIRT confirmed active in-the-wild exploitation of CVE-2026-76461 throughout September 2026, a zero-day in Secure Email Gateway AsyncOS that lets remote, unauthenticated attackers execute arbitrary commands with root privileges by sending maliciously crafted emails containing injected SQL statements. Physical appliances, virtual deployments, and Cisco Secure Email Cloud instances were affected; Cisco deployed server-side remediations for cloud tenants but on-premises admins must patch themselves. Fixes ship in AsyncOS 16.5.0-780 plus branches 16.0.4-3021 and 15.5.5-0141, and no workarounds exist.