CVE-2026-115454: KNIME Business Hub DoS Vulnerability

CVE-2026-115454 Overview

CVE-2026-115454 is a resource exhaustion vulnerability in KNIME Business Hub prior to version 1.19.0. The flaw resides in the remote workflow editing capabilities of the platform. An authenticated attacker can send requests that exhaust server-side resources. This causes intermittent unavailability of workflow execution functionality for legitimate users. The weakness is categorized under CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. According to the vendor advisory, no workaround is possible, so administrators must upgrade to a fixed release.

Critical Impact
Authenticated users can disrupt workflow execution availability on KNIME Business Hub servers by triggering excessive resource consumption through remote workflow editing endpoints.

Affected Products

KNIME Business Hub versions prior to 1.19.0
Remote workflow editing component of KNIME Business Hub
Self-hosted KNIME Business Hub deployments exposed to authenticated users

Discovery Timeline

2026-10-22 - CVE-2026-115454 published to NVD
2026-10-22 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2026-115454

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-115454 affects the remote workflow editing capabilities in KNIME Business Hub. The component accepts editing requests from authenticated clients without enforcing adequate limits on the resources those requests may consume. As a result, a malicious or buggy client can drive server-side CPU, memory, or other resources to exhaustion.

When resources become exhausted, workflow execution functionality becomes intermittently unavailable. Scheduled jobs, interactive analytics, and automated pipelines running on the Hub may fail or stall. The vulnerability does not expose data confidentiality or allow modification of workflows, but it degrades the availability tier of the platform.

The vendor advisory confirms that no configuration-level workaround is possible. The fix is only available in version 1.19.0 and later.

Root Cause

The root cause maps to [CWE-770]: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. The remote workflow editing endpoints allocate resources per request without enforcing quotas, rate limits, or input bounds proportional to the issuing user. An authenticated attacker can exploit this asymmetry to amplify server-side cost with low-cost client requests.

Attack Vector

The attack vector is network-based and requires low-privilege authentication to the KNIME Business Hub instance. No user interaction is required. The attacker interacts with the remote workflow editing APIs and issues requests that are expensive for the server to process. Repeated or concurrent requests exhaust available capacity. The impact is limited to availability of workflow execution on the targeted Hub. See the KNIME Security Advisories for vendor-published details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2026-115454

Indicators of Compromise

Spikes in CPU, memory, or thread pool utilization on KNIME Business Hub nodes correlated with remote workflow editing API traffic.
Elevated error rates or timeouts in workflow execution services during periods of normal scheduled load.
Repeated remote workflow editing requests originating from a single authenticated account or client IP in a short time window.

Detection Strategies

Baseline normal request volume and payload size for the remote workflow editing endpoints, then alert on statistical deviations.
Correlate authenticated session identifiers with resource consumption metrics to identify abusive accounts.
Monitor Hub audit logs for high-frequency edit operations that do not result in meaningful workflow changes.

Monitoring Recommendations

Instrument the KNIME Business Hub application and host with telemetry for CPU, heap, and thread utilization and forward it to a central analytics platform.
Create alerts for sustained availability degradation of workflow execution services.
Track per-user API call volumes against the remote workflow editing component and flag outliers for review.

How to Mitigate CVE-2026-115454

Immediate Actions Required

Upgrade KNIME Business Hub to version 1.19.0 or later as soon as change windows allow.
Audit which accounts have access to remote workflow editing and remove entitlements that are not required for business function.
Review authentication logs for unexpected or dormant accounts that could be used to abuse the editing endpoints.

Patch Information

The vendor fix is available in KNIME Business Hub 1.19.0. Administrators should consult the KNIME Security Advisories for the official release notes and upgrade procedure. Because the vendor explicitly states that no workaround is possible, upgrading is the only supported remediation path.

Workarounds

No vendor-supported workaround exists; upgrade to 1.19.0 or later is required.
As a compensating control, place the KNIME Business Hub behind a reverse proxy or API gateway and apply per-user rate limits on remote workflow editing routes.
Restrict network reachability of the Hub to trusted administrative networks until the upgrade is complete.

bash

# Example reverse proxy rate limiting as a compensating control (NGINX)
limit_req_zone $http_authorization zone=knime_edit:10m rate=10r/s;

location /rest/v4/workflows/ {
    limit_req zone=knime_edit burst=20 nodelay;
    proxy_pass http://knime_business_hub_upstream;
}