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@piyzard piyzard commented Aug 31, 2025

closes #128
/claim #128

🎯 Overview

This PR introduces a comprehensive detection rule for n8n Webhook Silent Failures - addressing critical silent data loss where incoming webhook requests fail to trigger workflows without proper error reporting or alerting. This represents the most dangerous type of n8n failure where business-critical automations silently fail to process incoming data, leads, or API events, potentially going undetected for days or weeks.

CRE Playground Links

CRE-2025-0178 Playground: Test Rule

📊 n8n Issues Covered

# Issue Type Example Error Pattern
1 Workflow Startup Failure 500 Internal Server Error: Workflow could not be started! Webhook execution failed
2 Database Connection Loss 500 Internal Server Error: Workflow could not be started! Database connection unavailable
3 Worker Context Loss Worker failed to find data for execution ID exec_789abc - execution context lost
4 Gateway Timeout 504 Gateway Timeout: webhook request exceeded 30 second timeout limit
5 Memory Allocation Failure 500 Internal Server Error: Workflow could not be started! Memory allocation failed
6 Service Unavailable Connection refused: n8n service unavailable on port 5678
7 Memory Exhaustion JavaScript heap out of memory during webhook processing
8 Permanent Data Loss Webhook data permanently lost - no recovery possible

🧪 Testing & Validation

image
cat rules/cre-2025-0178/test.log | preq -r rules/cre-2025-0178/n8n-webhook-silent-failure.yaml -d

🎬 Demo Environment

Repo link: https://github.com/prequel-dev/cre/tree/main/examples/n8n-cre-demo

Screencast.from.2025-08-31.17-01-45.mp4

Features:

  • Real n8n workflow automation simulation with webhook failures
  • Professional production environment simulation with actual failure scenarios
  • Automated webhook failure log generation with realistic patterns
  • Docker containerized environment for consistent testing
cd cre/examples/n8n-cre-demo
./start.sh

References

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n8n: Reproduce A High-Severity Failure & Write a CRE Rule [Multiple Winners] [Submit by August 31 11:59 pm ET]
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