CVE-2025-48389

FreeScout is a free self-hosted help desk and shared mailbox. Prior to version 1.8.178, FreeScout is vulnerable to deserialization of untrusted data due to insufficient validation. Through the set function, a string with a serialized object can be passed, and when getting an option through the get method, deserialization will occur, which will allow arbitrary code execution This issue has been patched in version 1.8.178.

Weakness

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently ensuring that the resulting data will be valid.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
• An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/586.html

References

• https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/commit/f7548a7076a0b6e109001069d6be223fbd96c61e
• https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/security/advisories/GHSA-jmpv-8q3h-2m8v