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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
HIGH severity

CVE-2025-40536

HIGH

CVE-2025-40536 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.1) CWE-693 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-02-12) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

SolarWinds Web Help Desk was found to be susceptible to a security control bypass vulnerability that if exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to certain…

Published
Updated
Affected
1 product
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 23, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Actively exploited in the wild

  • Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-02-12. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-02-15.
  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2025-40536.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
73.6%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs99th percentile — riskier than 99% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
63.2%70.8%78.3%85.9%67.6%73.6%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2025-40536 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Description

SolarWinds Web Help Desk was found to be susceptible to a security control bypass vulnerability that if exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to certain restricted functionality.

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
web help desksolarwinds
< 2026.1
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vulnerability

  1. Detect

    Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).

  2. Remediation status

    No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2025-40536 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.

How to detect CVE-2025-40536

A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:

nuclei -id cve-2025-40536 -u https://target
Template
SolarWinds Web Help Desk < 12.8.8 Hotfix 1 (HF1) - Security Control Bypass
Severity
high
Impact
Attackers can gain access to certain restricted functionality.
Remediation
Apply the available 12.8.8 Hotfix 1 (HF1) or upgrade to version 2026.1.

Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (inokii), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.

Frequently Asked Questions

SolarWinds Web Help Desk was found to be susceptible to a security control bypass vulnerability that if exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to certain restricted functionality.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2025-40536: High 8.1 (KEV)