CVE-2026-20353: Improper Control of a Resource Through its Lifetime in Cisco Cisco Secure Email
As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco Secure Email Gateway and Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager engineering team has conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in software hardening releases that address multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20353 are related to issues with improper control of a resource through its lifetime that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Pillar CWE-664.
AI Analysis
Technical Summary
CVE-2026-20353 concerns improper control of a resource through its lifetime in Cisco Secure Email products. The vulnerability was discovered during Cisco's internal security review and is classified under CWE-664. It affects multiple explicit versions of Cisco Secure Email, with a critical CVSS 3.1 score of 9.8, reflecting network attack vector, low attack complexity, no privileges or user interaction required, and full impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Cisco has released software hardening updates to address this issue.
Potential Impact
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated attacker to fully compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected Cisco Secure Email systems. This could lead to unauthorized access, data manipulation, or denial of service. The critical CVSS score reflects the severe potential impact.
Mitigation Recommendations
Cisco has released software hardening updates that address this vulnerability. Users should apply the official patches corresponding to their affected versions of Cisco Secure Email. Since this is not a cloud service, remediation requires manual patching. There are no known exploits in the wild at this time.
CVE-2026-20353: Improper Control of a Resource Through its Lifetime in Cisco Cisco Secure Email
Description
As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco Secure Email Gateway and Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager engineering team has conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in software hardening releases that address multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20353 are related to issues with improper control of a resource through its lifetime that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Pillar CWE-664.
CVSS v3.1
Score 9.8critical
Affected software
Cisco
Cisco Secure Email
pkg:github/cisco/cisco-secure-emailRun on your own infrastructure? Check whether these packages are installed with threat-finder — our free open-source scanner.
AI-Powered Analysis
Machine-generated threat intelligence
Technical Analysis
CVE-2026-20353 concerns improper control of a resource through its lifetime in Cisco Secure Email products. The vulnerability was discovered during Cisco's internal security review and is classified under CWE-664. It affects multiple explicit versions of Cisco Secure Email, with a critical CVSS 3.1 score of 9.8, reflecting network attack vector, low attack complexity, no privileges or user interaction required, and full impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Cisco has released software hardening updates to address this issue.
Potential Impact
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated attacker to fully compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected Cisco Secure Email systems. This could lead to unauthorized access, data manipulation, or denial of service. The critical CVSS score reflects the severe potential impact.
Mitigation Recommendations
Cisco has released software hardening updates that address this vulnerability. Users should apply the official patches corresponding to their affected versions of Cisco Secure Email. Since this is not a cloud service, remediation requires manual patching. There are no known exploits in the wild at this time.
Technical Details
- Data Version
- 5.2
- Assigner Short Name
- cisco
- Date Reserved
- 2025-10-08T11:59:15.414Z
- Cvss Version
- 3.1
- State
- PUBLISHED
Threat ID: 6aa81e7d55bf5e2cf54cc388
Added to database: 09/14/2026, 16:19:09 UTC
Last enriched: 09/14/2026, 16:32:18 UTC
Last updated: 09/15/2026, 04:02:03 UTC
Views: 12
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