Executive brief
OpenClaw is a gateway that routes HTTP and WebSocket traffic using bearer token authentication. When administrators rotate the bearer token secret, the gateway continues accepting the old revoked token until the service is restarted, allowing attackers with knowledge of the old token to maintain unauthorized access even after rotation. This delays the effectiveness of security incident response and secret management practices.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an authentication validation bypass resulting from stale auth credential caching. The gateway resolves bearer-auth configuration at startup and caches it statically, rather than re-resolving it per request from the current runtime secret snapshot. After a SecretRef rotation, HTTP and WebSocket handlers continue using the cached old bearer token value instead of fetching the updated credential. An attacker with the previous bearer token can make requests to the gateway HTTP and WebSocket upgrade endpoints and be authorized, even after operators believe the token has been revoked via SecretRef rotation. The fix (version 2026.4.15) implements per-request and per-upgrade auth resolution by calling getResolvedAuth() backed by the current runtime secret snapshot instead of startup-time cached values.
Affected products
- OpenClaw OpenClaw < 2026.4.15
Timeline
- 2026-04-17: disclosed
- 2026-04-15: patched: version 2026.4.15 released