BaselineWatch
Desk

CVE-2026-53595

9.4 critical exploit SSVC exploitation: poc Deferred

FreeScout is a free help desk and shared inbox built with PHP's Laravel framework. Prior to version 1.8.224, the public endpoint `POST /user-setup/{hash}/{invite_sent_at}` (`OpenController@userSetupSave`) selects the target account solely by its `invite_hash` column, then overwrites that account's email and password and logs in as it. No authentication, cookie, or prior session is required. After a user activates, FreeScout sets `invite_hash` to the empty string. On MySQL and MariaDB, `VARCHAR` equality ignores trailing spaces, so a single URL-encoded space (`%20`) matches the stored empty string and selects the lowest-id activated user. The expiry guard decrypts `invite_sent_at` with the target's password hash, but `Helper::decrypt` returns its raw input unchanged when decryption fails. A plaintext numeric value such as `9999999999` therefore passes the time-to-live check without any secret. The result is that an anonymous attacker sets the email and password of the lowest-id activated FreeScout account (a support agent, or an administrator if one was added by invitation) and authenticates as that account. Version 1.8.224 contains a fix.

Fix

Nothing published yet: no patch, vendor advisory or mitigation reference on NVD, no vendor advisory in the News for this CVE, not in CISA's KEV, no fixed package version. BaselineWatch does not guess at one.

Public exploits 1

Each line links to the index that lists it, never to exploit code. Exploit-DB's "verified" and a Metasploit rank of good or better count as verified; a PoC-in-GitHub entry is a repository's claim.

Change history 1

  1. First seenCVSS 9.4NVD modified 2026-10-24 20:10

Affected (CPE criteria) 0

NVD has not attached CPE configurations yet.

References 2