Medium severity · published Oct 21, 2026
CVE-2026-76462
Cisco Secure Client Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
New
5.5
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
A vulnerability in the interprocess communication (IPC) channel of the Secure Firewall Posture module in Cisco Secure Client could allow an authenticated, local attacker to elevate privileges on an affected device.
This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of user-supplied input. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a series of crafted IPC messages to a local socket. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to perform limited file write operations on the filesystem with SYSTEM or root privileges.
Although this vulnerability affects the Secure Firewall Posture module in Cisco Secure Client on Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems, this vulnerability could be used to obtain full root privileges on macOS and Linux. For that reason Cisco has assigned this security advisory a Security Impact Rating (SIR) of High rather than Medium as the score indicates.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 4% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
CS
Cisco Secure Client · Cisco
4.9.00086; 4.9.01095; 4.9.02028; 4.9.03047; 4.9.03049; 4.9.04043; +34 more · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-76462
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-76462
sec.cloudapps.cisco.com
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sec-client-priv-esc-muF8eZdm
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