CVE-2026-40565

FreeScout has Stored XSS / CSS Injection via linkify() — Unescaped URL in Anchor href

State: Published
Severity: 6.1 Medium
Published: Apr 21, 2026
Updated: Apr 21, 2026
Reserved: Apr 14, 2026

Description

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.

Scores

CVSS	Score	Vector	Source
3.1	6.1 Medium	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N	GitHub_M

Weaknesses

CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Affected Products

Product	Versions
freescoutfreescout-help-desk	< 1.8.213Affected

References

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