CVE-2025-54366

FreeScout is a lightweight free open source help desk and shared inbox built with PHP (Laravel framework). In versions 1.8.185 and below, there is a critical deserialization vulnerability in the /conversation/ajax endpoint that allows authenticated users with knowledge of the APP_KEY to achieve remote code execution. The vulnerability occurs when the application processes the attachments_all and attachments POST parameters through the insecure Helper::decrypt() function, which performs unsafe deserialization of user-controlled data without proper validation. This flaw enables attackers to create arbitrary objects and manipulate their properties, leading to complete compromise of the web application. This is fixed in version 1.8.186.

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/9669c57f1ddbee896752d9e16270abfd97b20eb9
• https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/security/advisories/GHSA-vcc2-6r66-gvvj