Vulnerability · Published Apr 21, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2026-40565FreeScout has Stored XSS / CSS Injection via linkify() — Unescaped URL in Anchor href

Medium 6.1

In plain English

A medium-severity cross-site scripting in freescout from freescout-help-desk. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 10% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)6.1Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 90.2% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: poc

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official 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.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
freescout-help-desk	freescout	< 1.8.213

Weakness: CWE-79 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

References

https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/security/advisories/GHSA-49pm-xwqj-vwjp x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/commit/265379b3ae343f06846adc0aa8510643d1eac2df x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/releases/tag/1.8.213 x_refsource_MISC