Which versions of n8n are affected by CVE-2026-65016?

A privilege escalation vulnerability in n8n Enterprise SSO allows authenticated users who control their identity provider's role assertions to provision themselves as global administrators, enabling…. A patch is available.

How to fix or mitigate CVE-2026-65016?

Within 24 hours, identify whether your n8n deployment uses SSO-based automatic role provisioning and audit your IdP configuration to confirm whether owner-role claims can be asserted. Within 7 days, if you use the vulnerable configuration, either restrict role provisioning at your IdP to exclude owner-role claims, switch to manual administrative role assignment within n8n, or disable automatic SSO role provisioning and manage all roles through n8n's native controls. Within 30 days, monitor the n8n project and vendor advisories for a security patch release; prioritize compensating controls while awaiting a fix given this vulnerability's severity.

n8n CVE-2026-65016

Q: What is the CVSS score of CVE-2026-65016?

CVE-2026-65016 has a CVSS 4.0 base score of 7.7 (High). CVSS vector: 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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X. EPSS exploitation probability: 0.4%.

EUVD-2026-47632 HIGH

Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key (CWE-639)

2026-07-22 VulnCheck

GHSA-mwq7-vcmc-cm4q

GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf

Microsoft Privilege Escalation Authentication Bypass N8n

7.7

CVSS 4.0 · Vendor: VulnCheck

Severity by source

Vendor (VulnCheck) PRIMARY

7.7 HIGH

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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

vuln.today AI

7.5 HIGH

Network-reachable and authenticated (PR:L) SSO user, but AC:H because exploitation requires controlling the IdP claim and a non-default provisioning flag; full instance takeover gives C/I/A:H.

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

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

Primary rating from Vendor (VulnCheck).

CVSS VectorVendor: VulnCheck

Attack Vector

Network

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

Low

User Interaction

None

Scope

Lifecycle Timeline

Patch available

Jul 22, 2026 - 13:02 EUVD

Analysis Generated

Jul 22, 2026 - 12:25 vuln.today

CVE Published

Jul 22, 2026 - 11:21 cve.org

HIGH 7.7

DescriptionCVE.org

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.

AnalysisAI

Privilege escalation in n8n Enterprise SSO (versions before 1.123.64, 2.29.8, and 2.30.1) lets an SSO-authenticated user who controls their IdP-asserted instance-role claim be provisioned directly as global:owner, seizing full administrative control of workflows, credentials, users, and instance configuration. The instance-role provisioning path fails to block the owner role that the parallel token-exchange path explicitly rejects. Reported by VulnCheck with no public exploit identified at time of analysis; exploitation depends on a non-default configuration.

Technical ContextAI

n8n is a source-available workflow-automation platform whose Enterprise tier supports SSO via an external Identity Provider (IdP). The flaw sits in the instance-role provisioning routine that maps an IdP-asserted role claim onto n8n's internal global role hierarchy. Unlike the token-exchange identity path - which sanitizes claims and rejects global:owner - the provisioning path performs no such denylist check, so a claim resolving to global:owner is honored. This is a textbook CWE-639 (Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key): an authorization decision is driven by an attacker-influenceable key (the role claim) without server-side validation that the requested privilege level is permissible. The affected component is n8n-io:n8n across the pre-fix version ranges (per the supplied CPE entries).

RemediationAI

Upgrade to a fixed release - Vendor-released patch: n8n 1.123.64, 2.29.8, or 2.30.1 (choose the one matching your major-version track), as documented in GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/security/advisories/GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf). If you cannot patch immediately, the most effective compensating control is to disable instance-role provisioning by unsetting or setting N8N_SSO_SCOPES_PROVISION_INSTANCE_ROLE to false, which returns to the secure default; the trade-off is that instance roles will no longer be assigned automatically from IdP claims and must be managed manually within n8n. Additionally, harden the IdP so that the instance-role claim cannot be set or edited by end users (remove it from self-service attribute mapping and enforce it server-side), and audit existing users for any unexpected global:owner assignments granted through SSO before patching.