Cisco Secure Email Gateway Flaw Exploited in the Wild, Enables Root Command Execution

Cisco Secure Email Gateway Flaw Exploited in the Wild, Enables Root Command Execution Ravie LakshmananSep 15, 2026Vulnerability / Network Security Cisco has warned that a new critical vulnerability impacting AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email Gateway has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-76461, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been described as a case of insufficient validation in the email parsing logic that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to run arbitrary commands with root privileges on the underlying operating system. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted email message that contains malicious SQL statements through an affected device," Cisco said in a…