IT Week — a critical flaw under active attack in Cisco Secure FMC, Amazon bets big on second-hand too, and Windows' Start menu gets resizable

📰 News of the week: a critical flaw in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, already under attack

On September 9, Cisco confirmed that a critical vulnerability in its Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) — the platform many businesses and public bodies use to centrally manage security policies across multiple firewalls — is under active exploitation. CVE-2026-20079 carries the maximum severity score on the CVSS scale, 10 out of 10: it stems from a system process improperly created at boot time, and a single crafted HTTP request to the web interface is enough to bypass authentication entirely.

Once in, an attacker can execute scripts and commands as root, without ever providing a password — full control of the firewall management appliance, from the outside. Cisco had already disclosed the flaw in March 2026 with no evidence of exploitation; in August it detected real attacks, and the earliest signs of compromise date back to July 23. Patches have been available since July 29: anyone who hasn't applied them yet has had a months-long exposure window.

The severity of the case is confirmed by the fact that on September 9 the US agency CISA added the flaw to its catalog of actively exploited vulnerabilities, giving US federal agencies until September 12 to patch. There are no workarounds: any business managing Cisco firewalls through Secure FMC should update the software immediately, check logs for signs of compromise, and contact Cisco technical support if compromise is suspected.

♻️ Refurbished world: Amazon bets big on second-hand too

From September 1 to 10, Amazon rolled out its Second-Hand Offers Festival across Europe: ten days of discounts dedicated to returned, used, and refurbished products, from electronics to kitchen appliances. It's not an isolated experiment: in 2025 Amazon's second-hand sales in Europe exceeded €2 billion, with customers saving a combined over €380 million compared to buying new.

The process isn't so different from what we do every day in our lab: every item goes through inspection, testing, cleaning, and repair when needed, with a declared condition scale ranging from "Like new" to "Acceptable". Average savings compared to new run around 20%, and in Italy the categories most in demand during the initiative were precisely PCs, consumer electronics, and kitchen appliances.

The signal for any business still deciding what to do with its PC fleet is clear: when the world's biggest marketplace builds an entire infrastructure — quality checks, condition scales, warranties — around refurbished goods, it means it's no longer the fallback choice. It has become the standard, for consumers and businesses alike.

🪟 The Windows tip: the Start menu gets resizable, and search sheds Bing

With this month's update — KB5124008, released on September 8 — Windows 11 brings two practical additions on top of the movable taskbar we covered last week. The first concerns the Start menu, which now truly resizes: from Settings → Personalization → Start → Start menu size you can choose between Small, Automatic, and Large. The "Recommended" section has been renamed "Recent", and a new toggle lets you hide your name and profile picture from the Start screen.

The second concerns Windows Search: in Settings → Privacy & Security → Search there's now a toggle that removes Bing web results and Microsoft Store results from search, leaving only what's actually on your PC. The results interface has also been simplified, with less visual clutter and clearer labeling of where each result comes from.

The practical upside is twofold: fewer advertising distractions while looking for a file, and on a laptop with less RAM — a refurbished business machine, for instance — search feels noticeably snappier without querying the web on every keystroke. A small extra freedom on a free update. See you next week! 🚀