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Cisco patches critical admin authentication bypass in SD-WAN Manager

Abhishek Gawade
Abhishek GawadeinSoBasically
1 min readEdition: 2026-10-13-cybersecurity-advisories
Topographic elevation contour card for Cisco patches critical admin authentication bypass in SD-WAN Manager
VISUAL ARTWORK:Original editorial artwork. Third-party brand marks used under nominative fair use.

What happened.Cisco issued a critical security advisory for Catalyst SD-WAN Manager. The defect allows unauthenticated remote attackers to bypass API authentication and gain complete administrative control of the system.

Why it matters.Gaining administrative access to an SD-WAN manager gives an attacker total control over corporate network routing and segmentation policies. Network teams should install the fixed release immediately and isolate SD-WAN management interfaces from public network paths.

The technical specifications:

  • Flaw: Improper URI encoding handling in HTTP requests lets attackers bypass API access controls and call administrative endpoints.
  • Mitigation: Cisco provided a temporary Live Protect shield, but warned the shield provides only partial defense and can block legitimate encoded logins.
  • Remediation: Full protection requires upgrading to the first fixed software release because no complete configuration workaround exists.
TOPICS:
#security#vulnerability