CVE-2026-33663: n8n is Vulnerable to Credential Theft via Name-Based Resolution and Permission Checker Bypass in Community Edition

An authenticated user with the global:member role could exploit chained authorization flaws in n8n’s credential pipeline to steal plaintext secrets from generic HTTP credentials (httpBasicAuth, httpHeaderAuth, httpQueryAuth) belonging to other users on the same instance.

The attack abuses a name-based credential resolution path that does not enforce ownership or project scope, combined with a bypass in the credentials permission checker that causes generic HTTP credential types to be skipped during pre-execution validation. Together, these flaws allow a member-role user to resolve another user’s credential ID and execute a workflow that decrypts and uses that credential without authorization.

Native integration credential types (e.g. slackApi, openAiApi, postgres) are not affected by this issue.

This vulnerability affects Community Edition only. Enterprise Edition has additional permission gates on workflow creation and execution that independently block this attack chain.