Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (N8N1767783939)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of n8n's Vulnerability and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts n8n Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the n8n breach identified under incident ID N8N1767783939.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of n8n's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/n8n, the number of followers: 256751, the industry type: Software Development and the number of employees: 663 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 761 and after the incident was 756 with a difference of -5 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on n8n and their customers.
On 18 November 2025, n8n disclosed Remote Code Execution (RCE) issues under the banner "Ni8mare: Critical Unauthenticated RCE Vulnerability in n8n (CVE-2026-21858)".
A maximum-severity security flaw in n8n, a popular workflow automation platform, allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain complete control over susceptible instances.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting n8n workflow automation instances (all versions prior to and including 1.65.0), and exposing Sensitive secrets, API credentials, OAuth tokens, database connections, cloud storage access, administrator credentials.
In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Release of patched version (1.121.0 and later), and began remediation that includes Upgrade to patched versions (1.121.0, 1.123.10, 2.1.5, 2.2.4, or 2.3.0), avoid exposing n8n to the internet, enforce authentication for all Forms, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public advisory published by n8n, technical details shared with The Hacker News.
The case underscores how Completed (vulnerability patched and disclosed), teams are taking away lessons such as Critical vulnerabilities in workflow automation platforms can serve as a single point of failure for an organization's entire digital infrastructure. Proper input validation, authentication enforcement, and least-privilege access are essential to mitigate such risks, and recommending next steps like Upgrade to the latest patched version of n8n immediately, Avoid exposing n8n instances to the internet and Enforce authentication for all Forms and webhook endpoints, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Users advised to upgrade to patched versions and implement recommended security measures.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including unauthenticated remote attackers to gain complete control, and exploits a Content-Type confusion flaw in n8ns webhook and External Remote Services (T1133) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating n8n workflow automation platform exposed to the internet without authentication. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating execute arbitrary commands on the server via Execute Command nodes and Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating remote code execution (RCE) by creating workflows with malicious nodes. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating forge session cookies to bypass authentication and gain admin access and Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Setuid and Setgid (T1548.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating complete control over vulnerable instances implies privilege escalation. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating extract admin credentials (user ID, email, hashed password) from database.sqlite and Unsecured Credentials: Private Keys (T1552.004) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating extract encryption keys from configuration files. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified File and Directory Discovery (T1083) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating read arbitrary files (e.g., /home/node/.n8n/database.sqlite). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating extract sensitive secrets, API credentials, OAuth tokens, database connections. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating data exfiltration possible via arbitrary file read and RCE. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Resource Hijacking (T1496) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating complete system compromise, unauthorized access to connected services. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- n8n Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/n8n/incident/N8N1767783939
- n8n CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/n8n
- n8n Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/n8n1767783939-vulnerability-november-2025/
- n8n CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/n8n/history
- n8n CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://thehackernews.com/2026/01/critical-n8n-vulnerability-cvss-100.html
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf