When workflows go rogue: critical n8n vulnerability opens door to system commands

A critical vulnerability has been discovered in n8n, a popular open-source workflow automation platform, enabling authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands on host systems.

The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2025-68668 and has been assigned a high CVSS score of 9.9 out of 10, highlighting its seriousness.

The security weakness reportedly stems from a sandbox-bypass issue in n8n’s Python Code Node, which uses Pyodide for code execution. The vulnerability allows authenticated users with workflow-creation or modification permissions to bypass security measures.

The problem has been described as a case of a protection mechanism failure. Cyera Research Labs’ Vladimir Tokarev and Ofek Itach have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw, which has been codenamed N8scape.

The vulnerability affects all n8n versions from 1.0.0 through 1.111.0, exposing a wide range of deployments to potential compromise.

Plus, the attack is quite simple to execute and requires no user interaction: only network access and low-level authentication privileges are needed.

Exploiting CVE-2025-68668 can lead to complete system compromise, as attackers can execute commands with n8n process privileges.

“A sandbox bypass vulnerability exists in the Python Code Node that uses Pyodide,” an advisory for the flaw states.

Organizations running affected versions should immediately upgrade to version 2.0.0 or later, n8n said.​

“An authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows can exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary commands on the host system running n8n, using the same privileges as the n8n process.”

Organizations running affected versions should immediately upgrade to version 2.0.0 or later, n8n said.​ Those unable to upgrade immediately can mitigate risk by applying temporary workarounds outlined below.

• Disable the Code Node by setting the environment variable NODES_EXCLUDE: “[\”n8n-nodes-base.code\”]”
• Disable Python support in the Code node by setting the environment variable N8N_PYTHON_ENABLED=false, which was introduced in n8n version
• 1.104.0Configure n8n to use the task runner based Python sandbox via the N8N_RUNNERS_ENABLED and N8N_NATIVE_PYTHON_RUNNER environment variables

Late last year, another critical security vulnerability was disclosed in the n8n platform. If successfully exploited, it could result in arbitrary code execution under certain circumstances.

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