Hackers Targeting Cisco Unified CM Zero-Day 

Hackers Targeting Cisco Unified CM Zero-Day 

By Eduard Kovacs
Publication Date: 2026-01-22 08:52:00

Cisco on Wednesday announced patches for yet another zero-day vulnerability targeted by threat actors.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-20045 and classified as critical, affects several of Cisco’s unified communications products, including Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CM) and its Session Management Edition (SME), Unified CM IM & Presence Service, Unity Connection, and Webex Calling Dedicated Instance.

According to Cisco, a remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit CVE-2026-20045 to execute malicious commands on the underlying OS of the device.

The zero-day, reported to the vendor by unnamed external researchers, can be exploited by sending specially crafted HTTP requests to the targeted instance’s web-based management interface. 

“A successful exploit could allow the attacker to obtain user-level access to the underlying operating system and then elevate privileges to root,” Cisco explained.

There does not appear to be any public information on…