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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

#61

Post by operatingthetan »

I'm using openclaw for a personal development system running obsidian. It doesn't have access to anything else. Having an LLM trigger based on crons is very powerful and helps with focus and organizing.

The security risks of this setup are lower than most openclaw systems. The real risks are in the access you give it. It's less useful with limited access, but still has a purpose.

I know a guy using openclaw at a startup he works at and it's running their IT infrastructure with multiple agents chatting with each other, THAT is scary.

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

#62

Post by Oarch »

refulgentis wrote: post #41
Oarch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would probably depend on the target audience. I was very impressed by Anthropic's swarm of agents building a C compiler earlier this year with 1000 PRs per hour. Easy to nitpick that it wasn't perfect, but it sure was impressive.

Right. Pretty impressive. What percentage of people will think that’s life changing? Because then we’re not talking about “can everyone up their demos to life changing, please?”, we’re talking about “can everyone use demos Oarch thinks are life changing, please?” - and “can build a MVP C compiler draft that barely works for $XXK” isn’t really that compelling to me, and we’re both software engineers, and my whole day…

I'm still sure we can do a little better though.

Maybe a personalised diet and exercise plan based on a huge range of information: preferences, biometrics, habit forming, disposable income, your local area etc

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

#63

Post by lqstuart »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #28

Not just OpenClaw. Anyone giving an LLM direct access to the system is completely irresponsible. You can't trust what it will do, because it has no understanding. But people don't give a shit, gotta go fast - even if they are going in a bad direction.

Claude Code asked me for blanket permission to ‘rm:*’ and “security find-generic-password” within the same hour or so last week. When I’m ready to quit my job I’ll just let it go hog wild and see if it can get to my next stock vest without getting me fired

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

#64

Post by gos9 »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #8

I would like a personal assistant on my phone that, based on my usual routine and my exact position, can tell me (for example) which bus will get me home the quickest off the ferry, whether the bridge is clogged with traffic, do I need an umbrella? what's probably missing from my fridge, time to top up transit pass, did I tap in? etc etc. These things would appear on my lock screen when I most probably need to know t…

No security problems carries a lot of weight here because by design you’re having to expose a significant amount of information but this is doable as a weekend project

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

#65

Post by refulgentis »

Oarch wrote: post #62
refulgentis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Pretty impressive. What percentage of people will think that’s life changing? Because then we’re not talking about “can everyone up their demos to life changing, please?”, we’re talking about “can everyone use demos Oarch thinks are life changing, please?” - and “can build a MVP C compiler draft that barely works for $XXK” isn’t really that compelling to me, and we’re both software engineers, and my whole day…

I'm still sure we can do a little better though. Maybe a personalised diet and exercise plan based on a huge range of information: preferences, biometrics, habit forming, disposable income, your local area etc

This is an excellent point and reminds me that, in some ways, the agentic coding stuff and ability for RL to hill climb on that and improve models quickly, has distracted from prompt engineering / putting more effort into getting data to them as a user.

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

#66

Post by Barrin92 »

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?

>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 anyone's pushing it the faster you should run into the opposite direction.

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

#67

Post by mbesto »

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…

> The whole point of OpenClaw is to run AI actions with your own private data, your own Gmail, your own WhatsApp, etc. There's no point in using OpenClaw with that much restriction on it.

Hard disagree. I have OpenClaw running with its own gmail and WhatsApp running on its own Ubuntu VM. I just used it to help coordinate a group travel trip. It posted a daily itinerary for everyone in our WhatsApp group and handled all of the "busy work" I hate doing as the person who books the "friend group" trip. Things like "what time are doing lunch at the beach club today?" to "whats the gate code to get into the airbnb again?"

My next step is to have it act on my behalf "message these three restaurants via WhatsApp and see which one has a table for 12 people at 8pm tonight". I'm not comfortable yet to have it do that for me but I'm getting there.

Point is, I get to spend more valuable time actually hanging out and being present with my friends. That's worth every dollar it costs me ($15/month Tmobile SIM card).

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

#68

Post by justinhj »

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.

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

#69

Post by robotswantdata »

Wasn’t the point of openclaw to YOLO your credentials to the internet?

Only ever a creative prompt injection away from a leak.

Saw some smarter people using credential proxies but no one acknowledges the very real risk that their “claws” commit cyber crime on their behalf once breached.

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

#70

Post by sodapopcan »

mstkllah wrote: post #11
vessenes wrote: post #6

Yes, yes it is. And it's amaaaazing. We're going to have lots of sharp edges getting stuff like this secured, but it is not going to go away. Too useful.

What are your uses for it? If you don't mind sharing.

Writing blog posts and HN comments about how awesome OpenClaw is its #1 utility.
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