Critical Pre-Auth RCE Vulnerability CVE-2026-118633 Affects All Sophos UTM Versions, Manual Patch Required After EOL
Sophos UTM contains a critical remote code execution vulnerability that permits unauthenticated attackers to run arbitrary commands with root privileges.
The flaw, identified as CVE-2026-118633, was detailed in a security advisory published by Sophos on 28 October 2026. It affects the email proxy component when the scanning function is enabled. Attackers can exploit a path traversal issue combined with a processing race condition by sending repeated requests over several minutes, ultimately bypassing authentication.
The vulnerability received a CVSSv4.0 base score of 9.2 and is classified as Critical, the highest severity rating. Every version of Sophos UTM is impacted.
Although Sophos UTM has reached end-of-life, the vendor prepared a corrective patch. Because support has ended, the patch is not delivered automatically and must be installed manually by administrators. Sophos strongly recommends applying the patch without delay for any installations that still use the email protection feature.
In parallel, the company encourages organizations to migrate to the actively supported Sophos Firewall product line.
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