SolarWinds Makes Fixes To Address Supernova Attack; Street Sees 34% Upside

Software provider SolarWinds announced that it has released updates to its Orion platform products in response to the Supernova malware attack.

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SolarWinds (SWI) released updates for all supported versions of its Orion platform products and a fix for customers on unsupported versions of these products. The company previously provided two hotfix updates on December 14 and 15, which contained security enhancements, including those designed to prevent certain versions of the Orion products from being attacked by the Supernova malware.

The company had previously announced that it has been made aware of a cyberattack that had impacted its Orion monitoring products which, if activated, could potentially allow an attacker to compromise the server on which the Orion products run.

SolarWinds also disclosed that the attack was likely the result of “a highly sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by an outside nation state”, though the company acknowledged that it had not independently verified the attacker’s identity. (See SWI stock analysis on TipRanks)

“Like other software companies, SolarWinds seeks to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities in its products to customers, while also mitigating the risk that bad actors seek to exploit those vulnerabilities, by releasing updates to their products before the company discloses the vulnerabilities,” the company said in a statement.

On Dec. 21, Truist Financial analyst Terry Tillman downgraded SolarWinds to Hold from Buy and lowered the price target to $14 (10% downside potential) from $26, citing a lack of visibility into potential business and financial model impacts related to the malware incidents.

Tillman pointed to the 40% loss in the stock’s value owing to the cyber attack news compared to the 5% median gain in his software coverage group.

The rest of the Street is cautiously optimistic on the stock’s outlook. The Moderate Buy analyst consensus is based on 3 Buys, 3 Holds and 1 Sell. With shares down 15% year-to-date, the average price target of $20.86 implies upside potential of 33.9% from current levels.