Executive brief
OpenClaw is a service/application gateway framework that provides HTTP-based session management and remote administration capabilities. A flaw in the /sessions/:sessionKey/kill endpoint allows any bearer-authenticated user to terminate arbitrary remote sessions that they do not own, when only local administrators or the session owner should have this privilege. An attacker with basic API credentials could disrupt service availability and operations by forcefully killing legitimate sessions.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an incorrect authorization check (CWE-863) and incorrect privilege assignment (CWE-266) in the HTTP POST /sessions/:sessionKey/kill endpoint. The route previously granted admin-level privileges to any bearer-token-authenticated request, allowing calls to killSubagentRunAdmin() without validating that the requester owns the session or has been granted explicit operator scopes. The vulnerability is network-reachable and requires only basic API authentication; no elevated privileges are needed to exploit it. An attacker can terminate any session on the system, causing potential denial of service and operational disruption. The fix (commit 02cf12371f9353a16455da01cc02e6c4ecfc4152) removes the bearer-token admin fallback and restricts session kills to local-admin or requester-owned sessions only. Patched in version 2026.3.25.
Affected products
- OpenClaw OpenClaw <= 2026.3.24
Timeline
- 2026-03-27: disclosed
- 2026-03-26: patched: Fix committed; version 2026.3.25 planned release