CVE-2026-86081
Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-86081 is a high-severity Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (CWE-1333) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 25th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-74275
Vulnerability Data
n8n is an open source workflow automation platform. Prior to 1.123.76, 2.37.7, and 2.38.2, the Git node clone operation matched an attacker-controlled destination path against the default N8N_BLOCK_FILE_PATTERNS regular expression. The pattern ^(./).git(/.)$ allowed catastrophic backtracking and ran synchronously in…
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the main n8n process. An authenticated workflow editor could therefore freeze the instance with one workflow execution; the affected default is declared in packages/@n8n/config/src/configs/security.config.ts. This issue is fixed in versions 1.123.76, 2.37.7 and 2.38.2.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation can discover inefficient regex patterns via performance or static analysis.
Development standards and tools can require safe regex construction and forbid known exponential patterns.
Denial-of-service protections limit resource exhaustion caused by expensive regex evaluation.
Input validation can constrain data that would otherwise trigger worst-case regex complexity.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect and reject regex patterns with exponential worst-case complexity.
Secure development lifecycle mandates review of algorithmic efficiency, directly addressing ReDoS-prone regex.
Application security requirements can specify input-validation rules that limit regex complexity.
Secure architecture principles encourage avoidance of computationally expensive constructs such as catastrophic backtracking.
Secure coding standards explicitly prohibit or limit the use of inefficient regular expressions.