Privilege escalation in Solarwinds Serv-U
CVE-2025-40538
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.
Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation
Published · last modified .
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 9.1 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.
EPSS exploit prediction
EPSS: 0.005 (44.6th percentile), scored .
Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 45th percentile — 44.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.
EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.005 · change: +0.000
Affected products
- Solarwinds Serv-U — versions SolarWinds Serv-U 15.5.3 and prior versions
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- www.solarwinds.com/trust-center/security-advisories/CVE-2025-40538 (Vendor Advisory)
- documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/servu/content/release_notes/serv… (Release Notes, Vendor Advisory)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2025-40538?
- CVE-2025-40538 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Solarwinds Serv-U, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 9.1/10. Published 2026-02-24.
- How severe is CVE-2025-40538?
- Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.1 out of 10.