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Cisco fixes maximum-severity Secure Email Gateway relative path traversal flaw

Abhishek Gawade
Abhishek GawadeinSoBasically
1 min readEdition: 2026-10-18-cybersecurity-advisories
Topographic elevation contour card for Cisco fixes maximum-severity Secure Email Gateway relative path traversal flaw
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What happened.Cisco published an urgent advisory for Secure Email Gateway addressing an unauthenticated remote code execution flaw in its file reputation engine.

Why it matters.Mail gateways process untrusted inbound traffic directly at network perimeters, making unauthenticated file write defects catastrophic. Security leads should run the command line scanner status utility immediately and upgrade core scanner packages before attackers weaponize public exploit scripts.

The technical specifications:

  • Mechanism: Relative path traversal in the Advanced Malware Protection engine lets attackers overwrite arbitrary system files using crafted email attachments.
  • Affected versions: The flaw impacts AsyncOS for SEG releases 15.5, 16.0, and 16.5 when running Content Scanner Tools packages older than 25.3.0.5525.
  • Patching: Administrators can install Content Scanner Tools build 25.3.0.5525 immediately without rebooting appliances or taking mail queues offline.
TOPICS:
#security#vulnerability#exploit-in-the-wild#critical-infrastructure