One Patch, A Thousand Excuses, and a Very Expensive Whisky Bottle
Here we go again: a critical vulnerability in Cisco Unified Communications Manager, CVE-2026-20045, has shipped a nice little patch and the world pretends patch cadence is a sport. Attackers have been quick to exploit the zero-day in the wild, because apparently the easiest way to prove you deserve a raise is to pummel SOCs with a vulnerability that makes a remote code execution look almost quaint. And yes, you guessed it, the patch lands after the exploit has already done the rounds, like a vendor press release pairing nicely with an overpriced bottle of whiskey.
Let me spell it out for the folks in the back who still think patching is a one and done event. This is unauthenticated remote code execution, which means a bad actor can call your phone system’s bluff without so much as a password prompt. Cisco isn’t just patching a bug; they’re issuing a reminder that the backbone of many corporate environments is a service desk with a dangerous habit of trusting the network more than it should. The vulnerability isn’t a mystery novel—it’s a brittle piece of architecture that spawns access points the moment you pretend your perimeter is a shield instead of a suggestion.
Now the vendor chorus begins: patch availability, exploit mitigation guidance, and a dashboard full of CVSS scores that read like a wine list—bold, critical, and occasionally aged in oak. The real question isn’t whether your team will apply the patch; it’s whether your patch management process can survive the noise, the testing bottleneck, and the inevitable change-control drama that follows a critical-severity disclosure. Spoiler: most teams will patch when the business unit stops calling it a roadblock to their productivity, which is exactly when the attacker finishes filing a new resume for your network.
The bigger issue isn’t just this CVE. It’s the culture around it. Vendors hype criticals to justify support contracts, CISOs chase the latest incident metrics like it’s a fantasy football league, and IT shops treat patching as a checkbox rather than a continuous, hardening practice. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking, and the only thing more fragile than your patch window is the fragile confidence of your users who still think a patch note is the same as a shield.
What should you actually do tomorrow, besides pouring a measure of something aged and bitter? Segment aggressively, enforce least privilege on admin interfaces, monitor for abnormal SMB and remote-access patterns, and practice rapid detection, containment, and recovery—because patching without detection is just a nicer way to say you fixed nothing. And yes, hydrate with whiskey if it helps you pretend you’re a hero and not a functionary inside an endless cycle of alerts, patches, and executive dashboards.
For the original article with all the patch details, read here: Hackers Targeting Cisco Unified CM Zero-Day.
