In September 2026, Insikt Group® identified 94 high-impact vulnerabilities to prioritize for remediation, 59 of which had a Very Critical Recorded Future Risk Score. This represents a 29% increase from last month. 43 of these vulnerabilities were surfaced through the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, 37 were reported in open sources and validated by Insikt Group, and 14 were exclusively surfaced through honeypot data.

The 94 vulnerabilities identified affected products from 58 vendors, with Linux and Microsoft together accounting for approximately 13% of the vulnerabilities. The remaining exposures spanned network edge and security management appliances; operating systems (OS) and mobile devices; collaboration, content management, and enterprise platforms; artificial intelligence (AI), developer, and automation tools; and operational technology and industrial systems.

September reporting also highlighted zero-day exploitation of CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772 (NetScaler), as well as renewed exploitation of CVE-2026-35273 (PeopleSoft) against unpatched systems.

Quick reference: September 2026 vulnerability table

All 80 vulnerabilities below were actively exploited or operationally weaponized in September 2026. This table does not include the 14 CVEs that were exclusively surfaced through honeypot data, which are available to Recorded Future Intelligence Platform customers via the CVE Monthly report. The table below also provides examples of public PoCs identified by Insikt Group. These PoCs were not tested for accuracy or efficacy. Vulnerability management teams should exercise caution and verify the validity of PoCs before testing.

Table 1: List of vulnerabilities that were actively exploited in September 2026 based on Recorded Future data (excluding honeypot-sourced CVEs).

Key trends: September 2026

• September reporting linked NightEagle and UNC3569 to GhostContainer and GRAYRABBIT deployments, while Cisco FMC exploitation by three threat clusters led to credential theft, Cyclops Blink deployment, and Qilin ransomware.


• A suspected Chinese-speaking actor used a SecFlow-based environment with Claude-, Qwen-, and DeepSeek-backed workers, and a suspected Russian-speaking actor used hundreds of AI agents to compromise at least 440 PaperCut NG/MF instances associated with 395 organizations.


• 47 of the 94 vulnerabilities enabled remote code execution (RCE). Network-edge and security-management products were the most affected product type. Apache and Google represented the largest share of vendors, with three RCE vulnerabilities each.


• Insikt Group identified public proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits or scanners for 75 of the 94 vulnerabilities identified in September.


• The most common weakness class was CWE-306 (Missing Authentication for Critical Function), with seven vulnerabilities, followed by CWE-22 (Path Traversal), with six. CWE-78 (OS Command Injection), CWE-89 (SQL Injection), and CWE-94 (Code Injection) each affected five vulnerabilities.


• Eight of the 94 vulnerabilities were at least five years old, and the oldest was approximately 12 years old.

Trend analysis

AI-assisted campaigns combine older flaws with post-compromise tooling

Insikt Group detailed a suspected Chinese-speaking actor using a SecFlow-based operations environment with Claude-, Qwen-, and DeepSeek-backed workers to support reconnaissance, exploitation, post-exploitation, and collection across Asian targets. The threat actor tested or staged workflows for CVE-2014-6271, CVE-2020-1938, CVE-2022-22965, CVE-2016-4437, CVE-2021-43798, CVE-2024-4956, CVE-2021-29441, and CVE-2021-44228. The workflow routed candidate findings to vulnerability-specific playbooks, but not every attempt produced confirmed access.

A separate September report described a suspected Russian-speaking threat actor using hundreds of AI agents in a campaign targeting PaperCut NG/MF. The campaign exploited CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, compromising at least 440 instances associated with 395 organizations.

Figure 1: Risk Rules history on the Vulnerability Intelligence Card® for CVE-2022-22965 in Recorded Future (Source: Recorded Future)