Cloud Security Critical ServiceNow AI flaw exploited days after patch release July 20, 2026 Share By Steve Zurier (Adobe Stock) A critical bug in the ServiceNow AI Platform was exploited in the wild, according to threat intelligence researchers Defused. Patches for CVE-2026-6875 were released on July 13 and exploitation was first confirmed July 17. According to NIST, the bug could enable an unauthenticated user to execute code within the ServiceNow platform . NIST and other security experts said ServiceNow users should apply the patches immediately. “The biggest takeaway isn't just the vulnerability,” said John Strand, owner of Black Hills Information Security. “It's the difference in how quickly it was fixed. ServiceNow patched its cloud infrastructure within 24 hours, while many on-premises deployments take weeks to be fully remediated.” Strand said that's a trend his team sees across the industry: SaaS vendors are putting the vast majority of their engineering effort into cloud platforms because that's where the business is headed and where the margins are strongest. “Supporting on-premises deployments requires extensive regression testing across countless customer environments, and those products are increasingly receiving fewer engineering resources,” Strand said. “The result is longer patch timelines and a bigger window of exposure for organizations still running on premises infrastructure." Denis Calderone, Principal/CTO at Suzu Labs, said the gap here repesents an example of coordinated disclosure working the right way. In this case, Calderone said Searchlight Cyber reported this to ServiceNow on April 1 and ServiceNow patched its hosted instances almost immediately. “What took until July 13 was building and shipping a fix,” explained Calderone. “A pre-authentication sandbox-escape RCE is a hard class of bug to fix cleanly, and three months of quiet, responsible remediation before public disclosure is a feature, not a failure. The vulnerability was not sitting exposed that whole time.” Calderone pointed out that the number that should worry people is not April to July: it’s July 13 to July 18, five days from public disclosure to in-the-wild exploitation. “That’s the real window defenders live in now,” said Calderone. “And here’s the catch: the attackers are reaching the same code execution through a different sandbox-escape route than the published proof-of-concept, so anyone who tried to block the known technique instead of applying the patch is not actually protected. If you run the self-hosted ServiceNow, patch to the July 13 release now. Blocking the PoC is not enough.” Roman Sannikov, global research coordinator at iCounter, said this looks like exactly the pattern his team has been flagging for a while: threat actors using AI to speed up patch reversing, so they can build a working exploit and hit organizations before they've had a chance to adopt the patch at scale. “It's not really about whether ServiceNow took three-and-a-half months to fix the flaw,” said Sannikov. “It’s about how little time organizations now have between a patch landing and a working exploit showing up once AI is doing the reverse-engineering. A week is already fast. That window is going to keep shrinking." An In-Depth Guide to Cloud Security Get essential knowledge and practical strategies to fortify your cloud security. Learn More Steve Zurier Related Cloud Security Google Mandiant warns of exposed serverless functions as attack vector SC Staff July 16, 2026 Mandiant has observed an increase in public-facing serverless applications lacking authentication, often due to business needs. API security Why Cloud Detection Fails When Teams Cannot Reconstruct Control-Plane Activity SC Media Editorial Intelligence, reviewed by Lee Tillman July 14, 2026 Structural problems prevent teams from reconstructing control-plane activity even when cloud logging is active Cloud Security Cybercriminals exploit OAuth client ID spoofing to bypass cloud security SC Staff July 13, 2026 The technique involves attackers issuing POST requests to Microsoft's OAuth 2.0 token endpoint using the Resource Owner Password Credentials (ROPC) flow. Related Events Cybercast From prompt to exploit: How LLMs are changing API attacks Mon Jul 27 Cybercast Cloud Security: The AI Effect and How to Proceed On-Demand Event Get daily email updates SC Media's daily must-read of the most current and pressing daily news Business Email By clicking the Subscribe button below, you agree to SC Media Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Subscribe Related Terms Cloud Computing Greynet You can skip this ad in 5 seconds