Leaked n8n API Tokens Exposed Live Instances to Credential Theft
Summary: GitGuardian researchers scanned public GitHub commits and found 4,576 unique n8n credentials tied to 1,255 hostnames; of 896 instances reachable during testing, 321 accepted at least one leaked token, giving authenticated access to about 36% of reachable instances. In a controlled n8n deployment, the researchers showed four techniques using only documented REST API calls - no CVE exploitation - that let an attacker read plaintext secrets in workflow definitions, run prompts on a stored OpenAI credential, pull data table rows, and capture a raw API key by pointing an HTTP Request node at their own listener.
Bottom line: Many of the exposed tokens belonged to instance owners or administrators, and older n8n API keys often carry no expiration claim, so a key committed to GitHub months ago can stay valid until someone explicitly revokes it. Of seven organizations GitGuardian contacted, only one acknowledged the report and revoked the credential - the rest, including a hosting provider, did not respond.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
- Topics
- AI Security
- Mentions
- CVE-2025-68613
- Related
- CVE-2025-68613: n8n Improper Control of Dynamically-Managed Code Resources Vulnerability Known Exploited Vulnerabilities · Mar 11, 2026