Executive brief
OpenClaw, a gateway service for managing API and WebSocket traffic, contains a security flaw where it fails to properly revoke access tokens. When an administrator rotates or revokes a security secret, the gateway continues to honor the old, potentially compromised credentials until the service is restarted. This could allow an unauthorized user with an old token to maintain access to sensitive internal systems and data long after their access should have been terminated.
Technical details
OpenClaw before version 2026.4.15 is vulnerable to a resource expiration issue (CWE-672). The Gateway HTTP and WebSocket handlers capture the resolved bearer-auth configuration only at startup. Consequently, if a SecretRef rotation occurs, the running process continues to use the stale startup-time credentials rather than re-resolving them from the runtime secret snapshot. An attacker possessing a previously valid but now rotated-out bearer token can continue to gain unauthorized access to gateway endpoints for the duration of the process lifetime. The issue is fixed in version 2026.4.15 by ensuring authentication is re-resolved per-request and per-upgrade.
Affected products
- OpenClaw openclaw < 2026.4.15
Timeline
- 2026-04-14: patched: Fix commit acd4e0a applied to main branch
- 2026-04-16: advisory: Original advisory GHSA-xmxx-7p24-h892 published
- 2026-05-06: disclosed: CVE-2026-43585 assigned and published to NVD
- 2026-05-11: other: Duplicate advisory GHSA-m8wm-r5vq-qjpg withdrawn