Cisco Security Advisories guidance
Vendor revision: Oct 21, 2026To remediate the vulnerabilities that were disclosed on October 21, 2026, Cisco strongly recommends that customers upgrade to the fixed software that is indicated in the advisories.
Overview
What is CVE-2026-76524?
A vulnerability in the control channel socket implementation of Open Source Snort 3 could allow an authenticated, local attacker with low privileges to execute arbitrary commands as the Snort 3 process user.
This vulnerability is due to a lack of authentication when a local user connects to the Snort control channel socket. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by connecting to the Snort 3 control channel socket as a local user.
A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands as well as read and write Snort 3 process memory.
Source: NVD
Official advisory
Configuration and update guidance
Cisco Security Advisories · Updated Oct 21, 2026
Affected products and configuration
This vulnerability affects Open Source Snort 3, regardless of device configuration.
For information about which Snort releases are vulnerable, see the Fixed Software section of this advisory. For more information on Snort, see the Snort website.
Workarounds and temporary mitigations
There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.
Fixed software
Cisco considers any workarounds and mitigations (if applicable) to be temporary solutions until an upgrade to a fixed software release is available. To remediate this vulnerability and avoid future exposure as described in this advisory, Cisco strongly recommends that customers upgrade to the fixed software indicated in this advisory.
Fixed Releases
In the following table, the left column lists Snort 3 software releases. The right column indicates whether a release is affected by the vulnerability that is described in this advisory and the first release that includes the fix for this vulnerability. Customers are advised to upgrade to an appropriate fixed software release as indicated in this section.
Snort 3 Release | First Fixed Release |
|---|---|
3.x | 3.12.4.0 |
Note: This fix is also included as part of the broader hardening improvements that are disclosed in the security advisory Multiple Cisco Products Snort 3 Security Hardening Release: October 2026.
The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) validates only the affected and fixed release information that is documented in this advisory.
Exploitation status
The Cisco PSIRT is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory.