Cisco Unified Communications Products Code Injection Vulnerability (CVE-2026-20045)
Severity: critical · Patch status: unknown · Since 2026-01-21 · CVE-2026-20045
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM), Cisco Unified Communications Manager Session Management Edition (Unified CM SME), Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM & Presence Service (Unified CM IM&P), Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Webex Calling Dedicated Instance contain a code injection vulnerability that could allow the attacker to obtain user-level access to the underlying operating system and then elevate privileges to root. CISA added CVE-2026-20045 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on Jan 21, 2026, which means attackers are exploiting it in the wild.
What to do
- Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
- US federal agencies must remediate by Feb 11, 2026 (BOD 22-01); treat that as the outer limit.
Sources
All live incidents on Threat Watch
