CVE-2025-40538 CRITICAL

CVE-2025-40538: SolarWinds Serv-U Broken Access Control Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Vendor Solarwinds
Product Serv-U
Weakness CWE-269
Published February 24, 2026
Last update February 26, 2026

CVSS base score

9.1/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required High
User interaction None
Confidentiality High
Integrity High

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

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.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

February 24, 2026 CVE published
February 26, 2026 Record updated