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OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

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Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#141

Post by pjc50 »

aftbit wrote: post #81
Barrin92 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are real, impressive examples of the power of agentic flows there aren't, and just like the blockchain "industry" with its "surely this is going to be the killer app" we're going to be in this circus until the money dries up. Just like the note-taking craze, the crypto ecosystem and now AI there's an almost inverse relation between the people advocating it and actually doing any meaningful work. The more anyon…

I'm gonna keep saying this forever - there are two obvious "killer apps" for crypto: 1. Semi-private blockchains, where you can rely on an actor not to be actively malicious, but still want to be able to cryptographically hold them to a past statement (think banks settling up with each other) 2. NFTs for tracking physical products through a logistics supply chain. Every time a container moves from one node to the nex…

All such private applications work better with a regular database.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#142

Post by _pdp_ »

feznyng wrote: post #106
_pdp_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connecting telegram to an agent with a bunch of skills and access to isolated compute environment is largely a solved problem. I don't want to advertise but here but plenty of solutions to spin this up, including what we have built.

That isn't secure is the issue, the more things you have it hooked up to the more havoc it can cause. The environment being locked down doesn't help when you're giving it access to potentially destructive actions. And once you remove those actions, you've neutered it.

The openclaw security model is the equivalent of running as root - i.e. full access. If that is insecure the inverse of it is running without any access as default and adding the things that you need.

This is pretty much standard security 101.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#144

Post by gherkinnn »

Oarch wrote: post #17

Responding to the tweet quoted in the article: why are the examples given of futuristic capabilities always so visionless - it's always booking a flight or scheduling a meeting. Doing this manually is already pretty trivial, it's more productivity theatre than genuinely life-changing. There are real, impressive examples of the power of agentic flows out there. Can we up the quality of our examples just a bit?

It's either vague notions like "more important than the invention fire", or concrete cases like booking trips that the likes of Google can enshittify at lightspeed.

I am not optimistic, not because the techs is lacking, but the context in which it is born is awful.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#145

Post by latand6 »

One thing I'd like to critisize - although I can agree that skill security is a real problem, but the solution is not to restrict yourself from using them, but to rely on the community: reviews, likes/dislikes, maybe having the skills curated. We need some trust signals. Also, since markdown files are auditable by design - your agent might actually verify them before running - provided you're using something like GPT-5.4 on high reasoning.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#146

Post by mr_mitm »

b112 wrote: post #85
justinhj wrote: post #68

As a site for people curious about technology, where is the sense of adventure? People are inventing the future of human/ai interaction themselves because big tech could not do it within their own constraints. Don't get me wrong, those constraints are there for a reason, but the hacker mentality seems muted lately.

Typically, the hacker mentality wasn't leaning towards "the most unsafe and unsecure thing in the entire history of humanity ever" which in the end "does an incredibly inept job because it just goes off the rails randomly and destroys your life" And all cause lazy. Instead, that's more like what addled octgenarians do. Get tricked by Nigerian scam artists into installing some p0wnage.

Hacker mentality was always about finding creative and surprising ways to use technology, so in that sense OpenClaw squarely fits in. It's not (yet) for everyone, but I applaud people who are courageous enough to experiment with it.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#147

Post by thorio »

dfabulich wrote: post #20

> Separate Accounts for your OpenClaw > As I have mentioned, treat OpenClaw as a separate entity. So, give it its own Gmail account, Calendar, and every integration possible. And teach it to access its own email and other accounts. In addition, create a separate 1Password account to store credentials. It’s akin to having a personal assistant with a separate identity, rather than an automation tool. The whole point of…

While technically this is rooted in the technological misconstruction of a missing separation of data and instructions.

However my point is: on the other hand, that would be the same if you outsourced those tasks to a human, isn't it? I mean sure, a human can be liable and have morals and (ideally) common sense, but most major screw ups can't be fixed by paying a fine and penalty only.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#148

Post by tyingq »

Oarch wrote: post #17

Responding to the tweet quoted in the article: why are the examples given of futuristic capabilities always so visionless - it's always booking a flight or scheduling a meeting. Doing this manually is already pretty trivial, it's more productivity theatre than genuinely life-changing. There are real, impressive examples of the power of agentic flows out there. Can we up the quality of our examples just a bit?

> Doing this manually is already pretty trivial

Well, and doing them programmatically and automatically without any AI is also possible, if not trivial...and has been for some time.

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#149

Post by holoduke »

Atiscant wrote: post #93
sdoering wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using OpenClaw - but I have a limited agent running that currently does a few things well. Morning Briefing: - it reads all my new email (multiple accounts and contexts), calendars (same accounts and contexts), slack (and other chat) messages (multiple slacks, matrix, discord, and so on), the weather reports, my open/closed recent to dos in a shared list across all my devices, my latest journal/log entries of thi…

Would you mind adding some details about how this is actually setup?

I run my own claw on a hetzner setup. The claw writes his own code based on some rules I gave to him (20 prs per day). it's active on moltbook and has access to my whatsapp, Gmail etc. dangerous it is. But fun as well. Specially fun to see which features it decides to build. https://github.com/holoduke/myagent

Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream

#150

Post by johnisgood »

stbtrax wrote: post #118
mjr00 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why are the examples given of futuristic capabilities always so visionless - it's always booking a flight or scheduling a meeting. This AI wave is filled with "ideas guys/gals" who thought they had an amazing awesome idea and if only they knew how to program they could make a best-selling billion dollar idea, being confronted with the reality that their ideas are really uninteresting as well. They're still happy to…

the whole obsequious nature of how LLMs also amp them up thinking they're onto something incredible is throwing gas on this dumpster fire. "What a great idea! This will revolutionize linkedin commenting. Let's implement it together."

Oh for sure. When I present something to the LLM it always tells me how great it is until I make it "question" it, then it says it was overestimating this or that. Eh. Quite annoying.
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