GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf
GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf is a CWE-639 vulnerability in n8n. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
n8n: SSO Instance-Role Provisioning Allows Privilege Escalation to Instance Owner
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
n8nnpmDescription
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 Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | n8n | all versions | 1.123.64 |
| 📦npm | n8n | ≥ 2.30.0&&< 2.30.1 | 2.30.1 |
| 📦npm | n8n | ≥ 2.0.0-rc.0&&< 2.29.8 | 2.29.8 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for n8n. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update n8n to 1.123.64 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-35q8-9mj6-wjmf across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.