CVE-2025-40538 (GCVE-0-2025-40538)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-02-24 07:40 – Updated: 2026-02-26 14:44
VLAI
Title
SolarWinds Serv-U Broken Access Control Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Summary
A broken access control vulnerability exists in Serv-U which when exploited, gives a malicious actor the ability to create a system admin user and execute arbitrary code as a privileged account via domain admin or group admin privileges.
This issue requires administrative privileges to abuse. On Windows deployments, the risk is scored as a medium because services frequently run under less-privileged service accounts by default.
Severity
9.1 (Critical)
SSVC
Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical Impact: total
CISA Coordinator (v2.0.3)
CWE
- CWE-269 - Improper Privilege Management
Assigner
References
Impacted products
1 product
| Vendor | Product | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SolarWinds | Serv-U |
Affected:
SolarWinds Serv-U 15.5.3 and prior versions
|
Date Public
2026-02-24 07:23
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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