CVE-2026-65016

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

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.

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.

Kodem intelligence

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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.

1. What is CVE-2026-65016? CVE-2026-65016 is a high-severity security vulnerability in n8n (npm), affecting versions < 1.123.64. It is fixed in 1.123.64, 2.30.1, 2.29.8.
2. Which versions of n8n are affected by CVE-2026-65016? n8n (npm) versions < 1.123.64 is affected.
3. Is there a fix for CVE-2026-65016? Yes. CVE-2026-65016 is fixed in 1.123.64, 2.30.1, 2.29.8. Upgrade to this version or later.
4. Is CVE-2026-65016 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-65016 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
5. What actually determines whether CVE-2026-65016 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
6. How do I fix CVE-2026-65016?
   • Upgrade n8n to 1.123.64 or later
   • Upgrade n8n to 2.30.1 or later
   • Upgrade n8n to 2.29.8 or later

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