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OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

nvd.nist.gov

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Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#51
post #33
post #20

Title is a bit misleading, no? You have to have openclaw running on an open box. And the post even says "135k open instances" out of 500k running instances? so a bit clickbait-y

More than 25% of users seems like a pretty accurate "probably".

You know you’re getting into zealot territory when people are arguing semantics over the headline pointing to a zero authentication admin access vulnerability CVE that affects a double-digit percentage of users.

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#52
post #43

Well, such things were to be expected. It's easy to bash on all the people who haven't gotten the necessary IT understanding of securing such things. Of course, it's uber-dumb to run an unprotected instance. But at the same time, it's also quite cool that so many people can do interesting IT stuff now. I'm thinking basically it's a trade-off. Be able to do great stuff, live with the consequences of doing that without…

Gonna be honest. I'd rather fight climate change than have people run LLMs unsecured

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#54
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than 25% of users seems like a pretty accurate "probably".

You know you’re getting into zealot territory when people are arguing semantics over the headline pointing to a zero authentication admin access vulnerability CVE that affects a double-digit percentage of users .

Does it really? Digging up the data from example the 135k instances in the open reeks like bullshit, I would suspect several other claims are exaggerated as well.

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#55
OpenClaw creator here.

This was a privilege-escalation bug, but not "any random Telegram/Discord message can instantly own every OpenClaw instance."

The root issue was an incomplete fix. The earlier advisory hardened the gateway RPC path for device approvals by passing the caller's scopes into the core approval check. But the `/pair approve` plugin command path still called the same approval function without `callerScopes`, and the core logic failed open when that parameter was missing.

So the strongest confirmed exploit path was: a client that ALREADY HAD GATEWAY ACCESS and enough permission to send commands could use `chat.send` with `/pair approve latest` to approve a pending device request asking for broader scopes, including `operator.admin`. In other words: a scope-ceiling bypass from pairing/write-level access to admin.

This was not primarily a Telegram-specific or message-provider-specific bug. The bug lived in the shared plugin command handler, so any already-authorized command sender that could reach `/pair approve` could hit it. For Telegram specifically, the default DM policy blocks unknown outsiders before command execution, so this was not "message the bot once and get admin." But an already-authorized Telegram sender could still reach the vulnerable path.

The practical risk for this was very low, especially if OpenClaw is used as single-user personal assistant. We're working hard to harden the codebase with folks from Nvidia, ByteDance, Tencent and OpenAI.

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#56
post #8

Really? Posting AI generated Reddit post with no sources or anything?

The link mentions the CVE, here's the link https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-33579

if would be good if we could have the submission including this link at the top

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you’re getting into zealot territory when people are arguing semantics over the headline pointing to a zero authentication admin access vulnerability CVE that affects a double-digit percentage of users .

Does it really? Digging up the data from example the 135k instances in the open reeks like bullshit, I would suspect several other claims are exaggerated as well.

> Digging up the data from example the 135k instances in the open reeks like bullshit, I would suspect several other claims are exaggerated as well.

Do you so stringently examine most CVEs? I’ll bet you don’t. Are you a big fan of this project? I’ll bet you are. Do you have any actual data to counter what they said or do you just sort of generally not vibe with it? If so, now would be a great time to break it out while this is still fresh. If not…

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#59

Honest question: What do people actually USE OpenClaw for? The most common usage seems to be "it reads your emails!", that's the exact opposite of "exciting"...

Assuming you're asking in good faith, IMHO the deeper story around OpenClaw is that it's the core piece of a larger pattern.

The way I'm seeing folks responsibly use OpenClaw is to install it as a well-regulated governor driving other agents and other tools. It is effectively the big brain orchestrating a larger system.

So for instance, you could have an OpenClaw jail where you-the-human talk to OpenClaw via some channel, and then that directs OpenClaw to put lower-level agents to work.

In some sense it's a bit like Dwarf Fortress or the old Dungeon Keeper game. You declare what you want to have happen and then the imps run off and do it.

[EDIT: I truly down understand sometimes why people downvote things. If you don't like what I'm saying, at least reply with some kind of argument.]

Re: OpenClaw privilege escalation vulnerability

#60

Honest question: What do people actually USE OpenClaw for? The most common usage seems to be "it reads your emails!", that's the exact opposite of "exciting"...

[flagged]

yeah I don't normally say "read previous HN articles" but it has been asked at least once in every article here.
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