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.

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. …

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

EPSS: 0.001 (17.6th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

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.

Affected products

Solarwinds Serv-u — versions SolarWinds Serv-U 15.5.3 and prior versions

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-269 — Improper Privilege Management

References

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.