CVE-2026-40565 (GCVE-0-2026-40565)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-04-21 15:52 – Updated: 2026-04-21 19:48
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Title
FreeScout has Stored XSS / CSS Injection via linkify() — Unescaped URL in Anchor href
Summary
FreeScout is a free self-hosted help desk and shared mailbox. Prior to version 1.8.213, FreeScout's linkify() function in app/Misc/Helper.php converts plain-text URLs in email bodies into HTML anchor tags without escaping double-quote characters (") in the URL. HTMLPurifier (called first via getCleanBody()) preserves literal " characters in text nodes. linkify() then wraps URLs including those " chars inside an unescaped href="..." attribute, breaking out of the href and injecting arbitrary HTML attributes. Version 1.8.213 fixes the issue.
Severity
6.1 (Medium)
SSVC
Exploitation: poc
Automatable: no
Technical Impact: partial
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-04-21 17:40 UTC
CWE
- CWE-79 - Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Assigner
References
3 references
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/… | x_refsource_CONFIRM |
| https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/… | x_refsource_MISC |
| https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/… | x_refsource_MISC |
Impacted products
1 product
| Vendor | Product | Version | CPE status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| freescout-help-desk | freescout |
Affected:
< 1.8.213
|
guessed |
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.
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