Overview

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, a popular network monitoring software, has been found to contain a significant security vulnerability, CVE-2025-26397. This vulnerability, which potentially allows an attacker to escalate their privileges and run malicious files, poses a significant risk to all organizations that deploy this software. The vulnerability’s severity is underscored by its CVSS score of 7.8, which indicates that its exploitation could lead to severe impacts including system compromise or data leakage.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-26397
Severity: High (7.8)
Attack Vector: Local
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System compromise or data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted | All versions prior to the latest patch

How the Exploit Works

The vulnerability arises from the software’s handling of object deserialization. Specifically, an attacker with low-level access can manipulate the deserialization process to execute arbitrary code. This is typically achieved by inserting malicious serialized objects into the data flow. When these objects are deserialized, they execute the malicious code embedded within them, allowing the attacker to escalate their privileges.
In the context of this vulnerability, the attacker can copy malicious files to a permission-protected folder. Due to the privilege escalation, these files can be executed, potentially leading to system compromise or data leakage.

Conceptual Example Code

Consider the following conceptual example:

# Attacker has low-level access and is logged in
$ cd /path/to/protected/folder
# Attacker copies malicious file to the protected folder
$ cp /path/to/malicious.file .
# Due to the vulnerability, the attacker can now execute the malicious file
$ ./malicious.file

In this pseudo-code scenario, the attacker successfully exploits the vulnerability by copying and executing a malicious file in a permission-protected folder.
To mitigate this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the vendor patch as soon as possible. If that is not immediately feasible, implementing a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as a temporary measure to help prevent the vulnerability from being exploited.