Hackers Start Breaking Into ServiceNow AI Platform Through Critical Flaw CVE-2026-6875

Key points

• Attackers began exploiting a critical ServiceNow AI Platform flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-6875, in live attacks starting Friday, according to threat intelligence firm Defused.
• The bug lets unauthenticated attackers escape the platform's sandbox and run their own code on the server, with no login required.
• ServiceNow patched hosted instances and released fixes for self-hosted customers on July 13, one week before exploitation was observed.
• ServiceNow says its AI Platform runs more than 100 billion workflows a year and is used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies.
• ServiceNow's public advisory still states it is not aware of active exploitation.

Criminals are now attacking a serious flaw in the ServiceNow AI Platform, the enterprise software formerly called the Now Platform that huge companies use to run internal workflows.

The bug is tracked as CVE-2026-6875. It lets an attacker who has no account and no password reach a sensitive part of the software and run their own commands on the server. In plain terms: an outsider can walk in the front door and take control.

Threat intelligence company Defused said on Saturday it is seeing this attack happen in the wild. The first attempts landed on Friday, days after ServiceNow released a fix. The company was first to report the exploitation activity, and the incident was picked up by BleepingComputer.

How did the attackers get in?

They hit a specific web address inside the ServiceNow software, /assessment_thanks.do, which was never meant to accept commands from strangers. This is the same weak spot flagged by Searchlight Cyber, the security firm that found the flaw and reported it to ServiceNow on April 1.

Once inside, the attackers use a trick to break out of the sandbox, a walled-off area meant to keep untrusted code from touching the rest of the system. Defused says the live attacks reach the same result as Searchlight's proof-of-concept but take a slightly different technical path to get there.

ServiceNow describes the attack as high complexity, meaning it takes skill to pull off. That has not stopped it happening.

What has ServiceNow done?

The company patched its own hosted customers automatically. For customers who run ServiceNow on their own servers, it released security updates on July 13. ServiceNow is telling any customer who has not yet installed those updates to do so immediately.

At time of writing, the official advisory still says ServiceNow is "not currently aware of exploitation against ServiceNow instances." That wording has not been updated to reflect the Defused findings. A ServiceNow spokesperson had not commented publicly on the exploitation reports.

This is the second awkward moment for ServiceNow in as many months. In June, the company privately told customers that attackers had queried data from customer instances through a separate unauthenticated flaw in one of its interfaces. ServiceNow later said that activity was linked to bug bounty researchers rather than criminals.

Why does this matter to ordinary businesses?

ServiceNow is not niche. The company says its AI Platform handles more than 100 billion workflows a year and powers over 100,000 enterprise AI apps across 85% of Fortune 500 companies. That means HR records, IT tickets, procurement data and customer service logs for a large chunk of global business sit inside these instances.

A pre-authentication code execution flaw in that environment is about as bad as it gets. An attacker who lands code on a ServiceNow server can potentially read data from any workflow that instance handles.

What should affected organisations do?

If you run a self-hosted ServiceNow instance, apply the July 13 patches now if you have not already. Check your web server logs for requests to /assessment_thanks.do from unusual sources, especially between Friday and today. Rotate any credentials or API tokens that lived inside that instance if you find signs of access.

Customers on ServiceNow's hosted service should confirm with their account team that the fix is in place. Ask for the date it was applied in writing.