CISA KEV updates and active exploitation alerts highlight shifting vulnerability risk
CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog continued to expand with newly confirmed in-the-wild exploitation, including the addition of four CVEs: CVE-2019-19006 (Sangoma FreePBX improper authentication), CVE-2021-39935 (GitLab CE/EE SSRF), CVE-2025-40551 (SolarWinds Web Help Desk deserialization of untrusted data), and CVE-2025-64328 (Sangoma FreePBX OS command injection). Under BOD 22-01, U.S. Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies are required to remediate KEV-listed vulnerabilities by CISA’s due dates, and CISA urged non-federal organizations to use KEV as a prioritization input because these flaws are common initial access vectors.
Separate reporting highlighted concerns about how CISA communicates changes to KEV metadata tied to ransomware risk: GreyNoise reported that across 59 instances in 2025, CISA updated KEV entries to reflect ransomware-associated exploitation without proactively notifying defenders when the “known ransomware use” flag changed from Unknown to Known, which can materially affect patch prioritization. In parallel, third-party coverage described a CISA high-priority alert for a critical KiloView Encoder Series issue, CVE-2026-1453 (CVSS 9.8), caused by missing authentication for critical functions that could allow unauthenticated attackers to create/delete administrator accounts and gain full administrative control—posing disruption and lateral-movement risk in broadcast/production networks.
How this story unfolded
4 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
GreyNoise publicly criticizes CISA's silent KEV ransomware updates
GreyNoise researcher Glenn Thorpe publicly criticized CISA for changing ransomware-exploitation status in the KEV catalog without clearly alerting defenders. Reporting highlighted that 39% of vulnerabilities later confirmed as used in ransomware had been in KEV since 2022 or earlier, with delays ranging from 1 to 1,353 days.
CISA adds four actively exploited vulnerabilities to KEV catalog
CISA added four vulnerabilities affecting Sangoma FreePBX, GitLab Community and Enterprise Editions, and SolarWinds Web Help Desk to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog based on evidence of active exploitation. The agency said Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies must remediate them under Binding Operational Directive 22-01 by specified deadlines.
GreyNoise publishes RSS feed for KEV ransomware-status changes
In response to the silent KEV catalog changes, GreyNoise launched an hourly updated RSS feed to alert defenders when a vulnerability's ransomware-use status changes. The feed was presented as a way to improve visibility into CISA's catalog updates.
CISA silently flips ransomware status on 59 KEV entries during 2025
Throughout 2025, CISA updated 59 vulnerabilities in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog from ransomware-use status 'unknown' to 'known' without separate defender notifications. GreyNoise said these changes were materially important for patching and mitigation prioritization, with many affected flaws tied to Microsoft, Ivanti, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, and Zimbra products.
Related entities
Vulnerabilities, threat actors, malware, products, organizations, and breaches Mallory has linked to this story.
Sources
4 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
Five for Friday: February 6, 2026 - Sherpa Intelligence
sherpaintelligence.substack.com
Open sourceExpert says CISA silently fixing bugs could be a problem | SC Media
scworld.com
Open sourceCISA quietly updated ransomware flags on 59 flaws last year • The Register
go.theregister.com
Open sourceCISA Adds Four Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog | CISA
cisa.gov
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