February 21, 2026 Source: The Hacker News 2 min read · 532 words

CISA Adds Two Actively Exploited Roundcube Flaws to KEV Catalog

CISA додала дві активно експлуатовані вразливості Roundcube до каталогу KEV

Roundcube is everywhere. It's the webmail client sitting on thousands of corporate and hosting provider servers, handling email for users who've never heard of it. And now it's actively under attack.

According to The Hacker News, CISA just added two Roundcube vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog—the official list of flaws that adversaries are actively weaponizing in real-world attacks. One of them carries a CVSS score of 9.9. That's not hyperbole. That's "remote code execution on your mail server" territory.

What We Know

The primary vulnerability is CVE-2025-49113, a deserialization flaw that sits at the critical end of the severity spectrum. The second vulnerability wasn't fully detailed in initial reporting, but both made the KEV catalog cut, which means defenders have observed active exploitation attempts in the wild.

CISA doesn't add things to that catalog casually.

The timeline matters here. Roundcube is open-source software, widely deployed, and heavily relied upon by managed hosting providers. If this flaw has been under active attack long enough to land on CISA's radar, then the window between discovery and weaponization was likely measured in days, not weeks.

How It Works

Deserialization vulnerabilities are the kind that make security teams lose sleep. Here's why: they let an attacker send specially crafted data to an application, which then deserializes it—basically converting that data back into executable code or objects. If the application doesn't validate what it's deserializing, the attacker can inject malicious instructions that run with the application's privileges.

In Roundcube's case, this isn't a subtle information disclosure or a login bypass.

This is remote code execution. An unauthenticated attacker can send a request to a vulnerable Roundcube instance and get shell access. The CVSS 9.9 score reflects that: it's network-based, requires no authentication, needs no user interaction, and gives you complete system compromise. Frankly, this is as bad as it gets without being a zero-day affecting every internet-connected device.

Why It Matters

Roundcube isn't niche software. It's the default webmail interface on cPanel servers. It's running on shared hosting platforms. It's sitting behind corporate mail systems. The blast radius here is enormous.

So why does this matter right now? Because active exploitation means attackers aren't waiting for patches to roll out. They're not running proofs-of-concept in labs. They're actively compromising servers. Today.

And compromised mail servers are a nightmare scenario. Email is the skeleton key to most networks. Once an attacker has access to a mail server, they've got credentials, they've got forwarding rules they can set up, they've got access to password reset emails, and they've got a foothold to move laterally. This particular vulnerability doesn't just give them a shell—it gives them the keys to your entire infrastructure.

Next Steps

If you're running Roundcube, this is a "stop what you're doing" situation. Check your instances immediately. Look for patches from Roundcube or your hosting provider. If you can't patch immediately, take the service offline or implement network restrictions—firewall rules that limit access to trusted IPs only, WAF rules that block suspicious requests.

For organizations using managed hosting with Roundcube: contact your provider today, not tomorrow. Get confirmation that patches are deployed. Verify it yourself if possible.

For everyone else: assume Roundcube is exploitable in the wild until you've confirmed otherwise. That's not paranoia. That's what the KEV catalog addition means.

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