Executive brief
OpenClaw is a skill automation platform that processes third-party skill packages. The tar.bz2 package extraction component bypassed safety guardrails that protect against malicious archives containing very large files or special entries, allowing attackers to cause local service disruption when skill packages are installed. This affects the availability of the OpenClaw service during skill installation.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a uncontrolled resource consumption issue (CWE-400, CWE-409) in src/agents/skills-install-download.ts. The tar.bz2 extraction path used direct shell tar commands instead of the centralized archive extractor, bypassing special-entry blocking and extracted-size guardrails (data amplification protections). An attacker can craft a malicious .tar.bz2 archive that, when extracted during skill installation, consumes excessive disk space or triggers other availability impacts. The attack requires local access and user interaction (skill installation trigger). The vulnerability was patched in version 2026.3.2 (commit 0dbb92dd2bcf9a32379d11c0f11ed016669dae3e), which hardened tar extraction parity by applying centralized validation logic.
Affected products
- OpenClaw openclaw <=2026.3.1
Timeline
- 2026-03-03: disclosed: GHSA-77hf-7fqf-f227 published
- 2026-03-02: patched: Fix committed (0dbb92dd2bcf9a32379d11c0f11ed016669dae3e)