SolarWinds is once again at the center of a cybersecurity storm as the company rushes to patch several massive holes in its Web Help Desk software. These are not minor bugs or simple glitches; they are wide-open doors that could let hackers take complete control of a company’s computer systems without ever needing a password. If you use this software to manage your IT tickets or customer support, the message from security experts is loud and clear: update your systems right now or risk a total takeover.

A Wave of Critical Security Failures

The latest round of updates from SolarWinds addresses six different security flaws, and the numbers attached to them are frightening. In the world of cybersecurity, we use a scoring system to see how dangerous a bug is, and four of these new discoveries hit a near-perfect 9.8 out of 10. This means they are about as dangerous as a digital vulnerability can get.

Among the most terrifying are the issues labeled CVE-2025-40551 and CVE-2025-40553. These are what experts call “deserialization” flaws. In plain English, this means a hacker can send a specifically crafted piece of data to the help desk software, and the server will accidentally run that data as a command. Because this happens before the system even asks who is sending the data, an attacker can essentially give orders to your server from across the globe without having an account.

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Other problems found in this batch include “authentication bypasses.” This is like a security guard at a high-security building leaving the back door propped open. A hacker can simply walk past the login screen and start performing administrative tasks. One specific flaw even involved “hard-coded credentials,” which is a fancy way of saying the software had a built-in password for a “client” account that was way too easy for hackers to find and use to get into the settings.

The Never-Ending Game of Cat and Mouse

This isn’t the first time SolarWinds has had to deal with these kinds of nightmares. In fact, the company has been stuck in a frustrating cycle of fixing one hole only for hackers to find a way around the patch. Just last year, a series of bugs made headlines because the fixes SolarWinds released didn’t actually stop the attackers. It became a “patch bypass” chain where the solution to one problem became the starting point for the next exploit.

Government agencies like CISA have already warned that hackers are actively using older versions of these flaws to break into networks. This history of “weaponization”—where hackers turn a code error into a digital weapon—is why the current situation is so tense. Security firms like Rapid7 and Horizon3.ai have noted that these new vulnerabilities are highly reliable for attackers. They don’t have to guess or get lucky; if a system isn’t updated, the exploit works almost every time.

How the Attack Happens and What to Do

To get a better idea of how sneaky these attacks are, look at how one researcher, Jimi Sebree, broke down the process for one of the RCE flaws. A hacker doesn’t just click a button; they perform a digital heist. They start by grabbing a session ID, then they trick a specific part of the software into letting them upload a file. Once that file is in place, they use a hidden bridge in the code to plant malicious “Java objects” that wait like a time bomb. When the hacker triggers them, the server starts taking orders from the attacker instead of the owner.

The only way to stop this is to move to version WHD 2026.1 immediately. SolarWinds has done the work to close these doors, but the fix only works if you install it. Given that hackers have successfully used these exact types of flaws to steal data in the past, waiting even a few days to update could be a gamble that your company simply cannot afford to lose.