Executive brief
OpenClaw is a local development assistant that manages gateway services. An attacker with config file access can inject dangerous environment variables (like NODE_OPTIONS or LD_PRELOAD) that execute arbitrary code when the OpenClaw service starts, potentially compromising the entire system running the service.
Technical details
OpenClaw's collectConfigEnvVars() function accepted unfiltered environment variable keys from the configuration and passed them into the daemon install environment during buildGatewayInstallPlan(), without blocking dangerous process-control variables such as NODE_OPTIONS, LD_*, or DYLD_*. This allows an attacker with write access to the config file to inject startup-time code execution in the OpenClaw process context. The vulnerability requires local config file modification and affects versions up to 2026.2.19-2, with a patch available in version 2026.2.21 or later.
Affected products
- OpenClaw openclaw <=2026.2.19-2, =2026.2.19
Timeline
- 2026-02-21: disclosed
- 2026-02-21: patched: Patch expected in version 2026.2.21 or later