Executive brief
OpenClaw is a workflow orchestration and automation platform. A vulnerability in its heartbeat context handling allows authenticated users to inherit owner-level permissions through the senderIsOwner mechanism, bypassing sandbox restrictions. An attacker with valid credentials can escalate privileges and gain unauthorized access to sensitive operations and data.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an authorization bypass (CWE-863) in OpenClaw's heartbeat context handling logic. The senderIsOwner privilege check is incorrectly inherited across heartbeat event contexts, allowing non-owner users to execute operations with owner-level permissions when they craft malicious heartbeat messages. The flaw requires authenticated network access but has no additional prerequisites. An attacker can read, modify, or delete arbitrary data and execute commands with elevated privileges. The issue is patched in version 2026.3.31 and later.
Affected products
- OpenClaw openclaw <=2026.3.28
Timeline
- 2026-04-02: disclosed
- 2026-03-31: patched: Version 2026.3.31 contains the fix