Telcos May Have Received Early Warning of Critical Telnet Vulnerability

A critical vulnerability in GNU InetUtils telnetd, identified as CVE-2026-24061, was likely known to telecommunications companies prior to its public disclosure. Global Telnet traffic dropped significantly on January 14, 2026, six days before the official security advisories were released on January 20, indicating potential advance warning of the flaw, which has a CVSS score of 9.8 and allows for trivial root access exploitation.