Leaked n8n API Tokens Expose 321 Live Instances to Credential Theft

GitGuardian researchers have uncovered a significant security risk affecting n8n, a popular open-source workflow automation platform. By scanning public GitHub commits, they identified 4,576 unique n8n API tokens associated with 1,255 hostnames. Of the 896 instances that were reachable, 321 (36%) accepted at least one leaked token, granting authenticated access to attackers.

The research demonstrated four practical attack techniques that require only standard HTTP requests and documented REST API functionality—no CVE exploitation or specialized tooling. These techniques range from enumerating users and workflows to exfiltrating stored credentials by creating malicious workflows that send them to attacker-controlled endpoints.

Key findings include:

• Many exposed tokens lack expiration dates, remaining valid until manually revoked.
• Workflow definitions often contain hard-coded secrets, and execution data can be retrieved with full payloads.
• Attackers can use stored credentials (e.g., OpenAI API keys) without viewing their values, and even extract raw values by abusing HTTP Request nodes.
• Responsible disclosure efforts yielded limited responses; only one company paid a $1,200 bounty and revoked the credential promptly.

Organizations using n8n are urged to revoke exposed tokens, review workflows for unauthorized changes, and rotate connected credentials to mitigate the broad blast radius.