CVE•Published 2026-03-03•1 article on news•7 live references•NVD data

CVE-2026-28289

Vulnerability data via CVEDB (Shodan)

CVSS v3.1

10.0

CRITICAL

EPSS percentile

Exploit Prediction Scoring System · top 2% of all CVEs

Description

FreeScout is a free help desk and shared inbox built with PHP's Laravel framework. A patch bypass vulnerability for CVE-2026-27636 in FreeScout 1.8.206 and earlier allows any authenticated user with file upload permissions to achieve Remote Code Execution (RCE) on the server by uploading a malicious .htaccess file using a zero-width space character prefix to bypass the security check. The vulnerability exists in the sanitizeUploadedFileName() function in app/Http/Helper.php. The function contains a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) flaw where the dot-prefix check occurs before sanitization removes invisible characters. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.8.207.

Timeline

Published 2026-03-03

External references

NVD MITRE Exploit-DB GitHub PoC Sploitus trickest/cve VulnCheck

Search for exposed instances

Shodan + Censys queries derived from NVD's CPE data. The vuln tag catches assets Shodan has explicitly linked to this CVE; the product / banner fingerprints find exposed instances even when the vuln tag was never applied (which is common).

Shodan · vuln tag0 hosts

vuln:CVE-2026-28289

Hosts Shodan has explicitly fingerprinted as vulnerable.

Shodan · product

product:"Freescout Freescout"

All exposed Freescout Freescout instances — cross-reference with the CVE's affected-version range.

Shodan · banner/body mention

http.html:"Freescout"

HTTP body or banner mentions "Freescout" — catches deploys Shodan didn't identify as a product.

More intel sources (5)

Shodan report

vuln:CVE-2026-28289