n8n has Arbitrary Command Execution via File Write and Git Operations

Impact

An authenticated user with permission to create or modify workflows could chain the Read/Write Files from Disk node with git operations to achieve remote code execution. By writing to specific configuration files and then triggering a git operation, the attacker could execute arbitrary shell commands on the n8n host.

Patches

The issue has been fixed in n8n versions 2.2.0 and 1.123.8. Users should upgrade to one of these versions or later to remediate the vulnerability.

Workarounds

If upgrading is not immediately possible, administrators should consider the following temporary mitigations:

• Limit workflow creation and editing permissions to fully trusted users only.
• Disable the Read/Write Files from Disk node by adding n8n-nodes-base.readWriteFile to the NODES_EXCLUDE environment variable.

These workarounds do not fully remediate the risk and should only be used as short-term mitigation measures.