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GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf CVE-2026-65016

n8n: SSO Instance-Role Provisioning Allows Privilege Escalation to Instance Owner

High npm
Severity
0.0 / 10
High · CVSS 4.0
Exploit chance (EPSS)
0.45%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 38.92% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-639 Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key
Fix
1.123.64
Upgrade n8n to this version or later

Description

Impact

n8n's Enterprise SSO instance-role provisioning maps a role claim asserted by the configured Identity Provider (IdP) to an n8n global role and applies it during authentication. The provisioning path did not prevent assignment of the global:owner role, unlike the token-exchange identity path, which explicitly rejects it. As a result, an SSO-authenticated user whose instance-role claim resolves to global:owner is provisioned as an instance owner, obtaining full administrative control over all workflows, credentials, users, and instance configuration.

This is a privilege-escalation issue that is exploitable only under specific conditions. It affects instances where Enterprise SSO is configured and instance-role provisioning is enabled via the N8N_SSO_SCOPES_PROVISION_INSTANCE_ROLE flag, which is disabled by default. Exploitation additionally requires the attacker to control the value of the instance-role claim issued by the IdP. As this claim is typically an administrator-managed attribute, exploitation generally requires control over the IdP or its claim-to-role mapping, or a permissive IdP configuration in which a lower-privileged user can influence the claim value. Deployments that do not use Enterprise SSO, or that have instance-role provisioning disabled, are not affected.

Patches

The issue has been fixed in n8n versions 1.123.64, 2.29.8, and 2.30.1. Users should upgrade to one of these versions or later to remediate the vulnerability.

Workarounds

If upgrading is not immediately possible, administrators should consider the following temporary mitigations:

  • Disable instance-role provisioning by unsetting or setting N8N_SSO_SCOPES_PROVISION_INSTANCE_ROLE=false.
  • Audit IdP claim mappings to ensure no user-controllable attribute can supply the instance-role claim value.
  • Restrict SSO access to fully trusted users only.

These workarounds do not fully remediate the risk and should only be used as short-term mitigation measures.

Affected versions

npm

PackageVulnerableFixed in
n8n
< 1.123.64
1.123.64
n8n
>= 2.30.0, < 2.30.1
2.30.1
n8n
>= 2.0.0-rc.0, < 2.29.8
2.29.8

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

n8n npm → 1.123.64

npm
npm install n8n@1.123.64
yarn
yarn add n8n@1.123.64
pnpm
pnpm add n8n@1.123.64

Severity breakdown

CVSS 4.0 0.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Attack requirements
Present
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality (vulnerable system)
High
Integrity (vulnerable system)
High
Availability (vulnerable system)
High
Confidentiality (subsequent systems)
None
Integrity (subsequent systems)
None
Availability (subsequent systems)
None

CVSS 3.1 8.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Weakness

CWE-639: Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key

The system's authorization functionality does not prevent one user from gaining access to another user's data or record by modifying the key value identifying the data.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design: For each and every data access, ensure that the user has sufficient privilege to access the record that is being requested.
  • Architecture and Design, Implementation: Make sure that the key that is used in the lookup of a specific user's record is not controllable externally by the user or that any tampering can be detected.
  • Architecture and Design: Use encryption in order to make it more difficult to guess other legitimate values of the key or associate a digital signature with the key so that the server can verify that there has been no tampering.

References

Advisories

Packages

Other links

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
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GHSA-qgpw-8g46-w95v
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Medium Also affects n8n
GHSA-65xw-2v52-jhxc
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Medium Also affects n8n
GHSA-pq6c-vh67-xpm3
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Medium Also affects n8n
GHSA-cqr2-h44g-v75v
n8n: Cross-Tenant Project-Member PII Disclosure via Missing Per-Project Scope Check on Role Assignment Endpoints
Medium Also affects n8n
GHSA-pf83-w3f9-8m37
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Medium Also affects n8n
GHSA-6xcw-7xm6-48c6
n8n: Expression Sandbox Escape via Shared Builtin Tampering and Code-Printer Injection Leads to Code Execution
High Also affects n8n
GHSA-34ff-336r-5q23
n8n: Domain-Restriction Bypass via Unguarded Model-Search Endpoint in OpenAI Chat Model Node
Medium Also affects n8n
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