Cisco Warns of Critical IMC Vulnerability Enabling Authentication Bypass

**Cisco IMC Critical Authentication Bypass (CVE-2026-20093):** Cisco published an urgent advisory for a CVSS 9.8 authentication bypass in Integrated Management Controller software that allows unauthenticated attackers to change admin passwords and obtain full control of affected servers and preconfigured network appliances; numerous hardware lines (ENCS 5000, Catalyst 8300, UCS C/E-series, APIC, Catalyst Center, firewall and analytics appliances) are impacted, there are no mitigations or workarounds, and administrators must apply the vendor patches immediately—no active exploitation has been reported to date.