CVE-2026-65016: n8n before 1.123.64, 2.29.8, and 2.30.1 Privilege Escalation via SSO Instance-Role

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-07-22 · updated 2026-10-29
Weakness: CWE-639

Description

n8n versions before 1.123.64, 2.29.8, and 2.30.1 contain a privilege escalation vulnerability in Enterprise SSO instance-role provisioning. The provisioning path maps an IdP-asserted role claim to an n8n global role but does not prevent assignment of the global:owner role (unlike the token-exchange identity path, which rejects it). An SSO-authenticated user whose instance-role claim resolves to global:owner is provisioned as instance owner, gaining full administrative control over workflows, credentials, users, and instance configuration. Exploitation requires that Enterprise SSO is configured, instance-role provisioning is enabled via N8N_SSO_SCOPES_PROVISION_INSTANCE_ROLE (disabled by default), and the attacker controls the instance-role claim value issued by the IdP.

Affected products

n8n-io n8n: before 1.123.64; from 2.0.0 before 2.29.8; 2.30.0 (and their updates) — fixed in 1.123.64, 2.29.8
n8n-io n8n: before 1.123.64 — fixed in 1.123.64

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: n8n-io n8n 1.123.64, 2.29.8; n8n-io n8n 1.123.64. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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