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Mallory
Medium

Authenticated CLI command injection in Cisco Secure FTD (root OS command execution)

IdentifiersCVE-2026-20063CWE-78

A vulnerability in the CLI of Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software allows an authenticated local attacker with valid administrative credentials to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system with root privileges. The issue is caused by insufficient input validation of user-supplied command arguments; exploitation is performed by supplying crafted input to a specific CLI command, resulting in command injection and execution as root.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation results in arbitrary command execution on the underlying OS as root, enabling full device compromise (e.g., modification of system configuration, disabling security controls, tampering with inspection/policy enforcement, and access to sensitive data present on the appliance).

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Restrict and monitor administrative access to the FTD CLI (limit to trusted administrators, enforce strong authentication/MFA where applicable, and reduce/disable unnecessary local/SSH access paths). Use centralized logging/auditing to detect suspicious CLI activity until patches can be applied.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply Cisco-provided software updates that address CVE-2026-20063 for affected Cisco Secure FTD releases, per the corresponding Cisco Security Advisory for the FTD CLI command injection issue.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Cisco SystemsSecure Ftd Softwareapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity1

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.