---
title: Talos Q3 'Vulnerability Pulse': CVEs passed 70,000 by end of September and grew 105% year over year; KEV grew only 37% | ctxsec
url: https://ctxsec.com/items/talos-q3-vuln-pulse-2026
description: ""
status: "analysis (Talos newsletter, opinion)"
published: 2026-10-15
---

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analysis (Talos newsletter, opinion)

2026-10-15

### Talos Q3 'Vulnerability Pulse': CVEs passed 70,000 by end of September and grew 105% year over year; KEV grew only 37%

In Cisco Talos's Threat Source newsletter (Oct 15), Thorsten Rosendahl argues the CVE flood isn't a zero-day apocalypse. His numbers: over 70,000 CVEs by the end of September, CVE IDs now routinely six digits (check your tooling), CVE volume up 105% year over year versus KEV up 37%. A third of KEV entries are CVEs from 2025 or older, which he reads as patch debt. Of the 2026 CVEs in KEV, 29% were added on the day they were published, only 2 points more than 2025, and networking-gear CVEs ticked up to 27%. He also flags KEV's new `forensicTriage` column from BOD 26-04. This is opinion built on public data, but it backs prioritizing by exploitation over raw count.

Sources: [Cisco Talos: The Q3 Vulnerability Pulse](https://blog.talosintelligence.com/the-q3-vulnerability-pulse-discovery-exploitation/)