OpenClaw creator here.<p>This was a privilege-escalation bug, but not "any random Telegram/Discord message can instantly own every OpenClaw instance."<p>The root issue was an incomplete fix. The earlier advisory hardened the gateway RPC path for device approvals by passing the caller's scopes into the core approval check. But the `/pair approve` plugin command path still called the same approval function without `callerScopes`, and the core logic failed open when that parameter was missing.<p>So the strongest confirmed exploit path was: a client that ALREADY HAD GATEWAY ACCESS and enough permission to send commands could use `chat.send` with `/pair approve latest` to approve a pending device request asking for broader scopes, including `operator.admin`. In other words: a scope-ceiling bypass from pairing/write-level access to admin.<p>This was not primarily a Telegram-specific or message-provider-specific bug. The bug lived in the shared plugin command handler, so any already-authorized command sender that could reach `/pair approve` could hit it. For Telegram specifically, the default DM policy blocks unknown outsiders before command execution, so this was not "message the bot once and get admin." But an already-authorized Telegram sender could still reach the vulnerable path.<p>The practical risk for this was very low, especially if OpenClaw is used as single-user personal assistant. We're working hard to harden the codebase with folks from Nvidia, ByteDance, Tencent and OpenAI.
The root issue is that OpenClaw is 500K+ lines of vibe coded bloat that's impossible to reason about or understand.<p>Too much focus on shipping features, not enough attention to stability and security.<p>As the code base grows exponentially, so does the security vulnerability surface.
The current OpenClaw GitHub repo [1] contains 2.1 million lines of code, according to cloc, with 1.6M being typescript. It also has almost 26K commits.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw</a>
There are like 10 openclaw clones out there. If you prefer security over features, just pick up another one.
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Aside from "exponentially" being hyperbolic, which part is unsubstantiated?
This is a vibe based comment. It’s a generic attack with no meat.
Is this you?<p><a href="https://x.com/steipete/status/2005451576971043097" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/steipete/status/2005451576971043097</a><p>> Confession: I ship code I never read. Here's my 2025 workflow.<p>Might want to start reading it I'd say.
- "OpenClaw, read the code"<p>- "You're absolutely right. One should read and understand their own code. I did, and it looks great"
I'm critical of OpenClaw and even the author to some extent, but I prefer to have nuanced and compartmentalized conversations, on a thread about a specific vulnerability, it's much more productive to talk about the specific vulnerability rather than OpenClaw as a whole. Otherwise we would only have generic OpenClaw conversations and we would only be saying the same thing.
Can you speak a little bit more to the stats in the OP?<p>* 135k+ OpenClaw instances are publicly exposed
* 63% of those run zero authentication. Meaning the "low privilege required" in the CVE = literally anyone on the internet can request pairing access and start the exploit chain<p>Is this accurate? This is definitely a very different picture then the one you paint
There used to be a time where people who shipped CVEs took accountability.
> <i>There used to be a time where people who shipped CVEs took accountability.</i><p>I see you haven't heard of Microsoft...
He took millions of dollars instead, it's working out for him.
Have you met these AI companies yet?
What time was that and who do we get to blame for Log4j?
With respect...Security through obscurity is <i>dead</i>. We are approaching the point where only formally verified (for security) systems can be trusted. Every possible attack <i>will</i> be attempted. Every opening will be exploited, and every useful <i>combination</i> of those exploits will be done.<p>LLMs are patient, tireless, capable of rigorous opsec, and effectively infinite in number.
According to this[1] your statement that practical risk was low is not accurate.<p><pre><code> > The attacker acquires an account or session with operator.pairing scope. On the 63% of exposed OpenClaw instances running without authentication, this step requires no credentials at all — the attacker connects and is assigned base pairing rights.
</code></pre>
If that's accurate, then this statement:<p><pre><code> > This was a privilege-escalation bug, but not "any random Telegram/Discord message can instantly own every OpenClaw instance."
</code></pre>
...is only true for the 37% of authenticated OpenClaw instances.<p>I'm sure it's extremely stressful and embarrassing to face the prospect that your work created a widespread, significant vulnerability. As another software engineer and a human I empathize with the discomfort of that position. But respectfully, you should put your energy into addressing this and communicating honestly about what happened and the severity, not in attempting to save face and PR damage control. You will be remembered much better for the former.<p>EDIT: more from the source[2]<p><pre><code> > The problem: 63% of the 135,000+ publicly exposed OpenClaw instances run without any authentication layer, according to a 2026 security researcher scan. On these deployments, any network visitor can request pairing access and obtain operator.pairing scope without providing a username or password. The authentication gate that is supposed to slow down CVE-2026-33579 does not exist.
> This is the intersection that makes this vulnerability particularly dangerous in practice. The CVSS vector already rates it PR:L (Privileges Required: Low) rather than PR:N — but on 63% of deployed instances, "low privilege" is functionally equivalent to "no privilege."
</code></pre>
[1]: <a href="https://blink.new/blog/cve-2026-33579-openclaw-privilege-escalation-2026#what-does-the-attack-chain-look-like">https://blink.new/blog/cve-2026-33579-openclaw-privilege-esc...</a>
[2]: <a href="https://blink.new/blog/cve-2026-33579-openclaw-privilege-escalation-2026#does-running-openclaw-without-authentication-make-cve-2026-33579-worse">https://blink.new/blog/cve-2026-33579-openclaw-privilege-esc...</a>
I am very skeptical about your real technical/engineering abilities.<p>You might know how to ship products that sell fast, but that's about it.<p>Your product is a cancer of AI sloppiness.
Nvidia, ByteDance, Tencent and OpenAI?! Wow!
About time to read the code you ship now...
The level of seriousness of your attitude here is not commensurate to the blatant security problem you are creating in the world.
What does Telegram/Discord have to do with anything? The OP never mentioned either of these software suites. In fact the only mention of Telegram anywhere in the entire thread is you copy-pasting this exact message.
Who are you replying to? The tone of your message seems to indicate you want to address some misinformation, but that isn't found here or in OP's link.<p>Did OpenClaw write this for you?
Honest question: What do people actually USE OpenClaw for? The most common usage seems to be "it reads your emails!", that's the exact opposite of "exciting"...
I've only been playing with it recently ... I have mine scraping for SF city meetings that I can attend and public comment to advocate for more housing etc (<a href="https://github.com/sgillen/sf-civic-digest" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sgillen/sf-civic-digest</a>).<p>It also have mine automatically grabs a spot at my gym when spots are released because I always forget.<p>I'm just playing with it, it's been fun! It's all on a VM in the cloud and I assume it could get pwned at any time but the blast radius would be small.
>It also have mine automatically grabs a spot at my gym when spots are released because I always forget.<p>seems far more efficient/reliable to get codex/claude code to write and set up a bot that does this.
Am I understanding right that you're leaving AI slop comments on public city meetings? Proudly doing so?
I use it to manage a media server. And use natural language to download movies and series. Also I use to for homeassistant so I csn use natural language for vacuuming the house and things like that. I do use it for a number of other tasks but those are the most partical.
so far, I've used it to kill a bunch of time trying to get it to respond to "Hi @Kirk" in a private Slack channel.<p>...and to laugh a little every time it calls me "commander" or asks "What's the next mission?" or (and this is the best one) it uses the catchphrase I gave it which is "it's probably fine" (and it uses it entirely appropriately...I think there must have been a lot of sarcasm in qwen 3.5's training data)<p>and I've treated it like it's already been compromised the whole time.
I use it for a side project. I just put it on VPS, and then it edits the code and tests it. The nice thing is that I can use it on the go whenever I have spare moment. It is addictive, but way better addiction than social media IMO.<p>The thing where you give it access to all your personal data and whatever I haven't done and wouldn't do.
my claw controls my old M2 mac, mostly my claw uses Claude code to code
Agent based chron jobs mostly that work with other agents. It’s really nice if you want to tell your computer to do something repeatedly or in confluence with many other agents in a very simple way. Like check my email for messages from Nadia and send me a notification and turn on all the lights in my driveway when she gets there without having to actually get into the nuts and bolts of implementing it. It’s actually really powerful and probably what Siri should be.
Assuming you're asking in good faith, IMHO the deeper story around OpenClaw is that it's the core piece of a larger pattern.<p>The way I'm seeing folks responsibly use OpenClaw is to install it as a well-regulated governor driving other agents and other tools. It is effectively the big brain orchestrating a larger system.<p>So for instance, you could have an OpenClaw jail where you-the-human talk to OpenClaw via some channel, and then that directs OpenClaw to put lower-level agents to work.<p>In some sense it's a bit like Dwarf Fortress or the old Dungeon Keeper game. You declare what you want to have happen and then the imps run off and do it.<p>[EDIT: I truly down understand sometimes why people downvote things. If you don't like what I'm saying, at least reply with some kind of argument.]
So I neither downvoted nor upvoted you, but I think people may be downvoting, in addition to the fact that they just don't like the thing, based on the fact that you didn't directly answer the question. Specifically, what are you using it for, not what hypothetically it would be used for.
First words out of your mouth are to accuse OP of not seriously asking the question. Then you write paragraphs saying nothing much at all. You could have simply answered the question in a simple straightforward manner.
You're probably being downvoted because you didn't answer the question. The questioner specifically asked what people are using it for and you answered by describing your technical setup. What we want to know is, what are you actually achieving with this tool?
This question gets asked a lot, and then answered a lot, and then asked again.. why fill the cup if the cup has a hole?<p>EDIT:<p>Y'all can downvote me if you want, but parent poster couldn't find clawhub.ai with 45K skills for OpenClaw.<p>Kinda belies the "No one uses OpenClaw for anything" line.<p><a href="https://clawhub.ai/skills?sort=downloads&nonSuspicious=true" rel="nofollow">https://clawhub.ai/skills?sort=downloads&nonSuspicious=true</a>
Obviously I already searched the web (not specifically HN I must admit) and there were always incredibly generic non-answers that ultimately say nothing (and they assume you have 3000$ per month or 2000 Mac Minis on your desk (hyperbole)).
Incredibly, one of the responses you got already is exactly one of those replies that says nothing. There's a whole bunch of words that don't actually answer the question.
I think you’ve got your answer, then. If nobody can tell you what it’s really used for, it likely doesn’t have any real use cases.
yeah I don't normally say "read previous HN articles" but it has been asked at least once in every article here.
I'm so tired of answering this question so I simply won't.<p>Your best way of finding if it's useful <i>for you</i> is to install it and explore, just like you would with any other software tool.
Dodged the question entirely. Makes OP point very valid. OpenClaw is just nothing exciting to be about, it is a YOLO/FOMO experience for people so they can feel they are part of the "AI world".
Before I decide to shoot up smack, I like to ask junkies what the whole heroin experience is like, what they use it for, and how it has affected their lives.<p>Nina Hagen - Smack Jack<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIDnN34ZZaE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIDnN34ZZaE</a><p>>Smack Ist Dreck, Stop It Oder Verreck!
Text of the post has been [removed]. Original saved here: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260403163241/https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1sbdw29/if_youre_running_openclaw_you_probably_got_hacked/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20260403163241/https://old.reddi...</a>
I don't use OpenClaw, but I still run my Claude Code and Codex as limited macOS user accounts and just have a script `become-agent <name> [cmd ...]` that does some sudo stuff to run as the limited user so they don't have any of my environment or directory access, or really any system-level admin access at all. They can use and write to their home directories as usual, which makes things easier to configure since those CLI harnesses really like when $HOME is configured and works as expected.<p>It's a good compromise between running as me and full sandbox-exec. Multi-user Unix-y systems were designed for this kind of stuff since decades ago.
Yes, if/since that user have no access to your apple id and keychain...<p>Not too much harder is using a VM:<p>With Apple's open-source container tool, you can spin up a linux container vm in ~100ms. (No docker root)<p>With Apple virtualization framework, you can run macOS in a VM (with a separate apple id).
> Yes, if/since that user have no access to your apple id and keychain...<p>Right, these are system accounts. They don't have access to anything except their own home folder and whatever I put in their .bashrc. `sudo` is a pretty easy sandbox by itself and lets me manage their home folders, shell, and environment easily just with the typical Unix-isms. No need for mounting VM disks, persisting disk images, etc.<p>I don't need virtualization to let Claude Code run. I just let it run as a "claude" user.
> 4. System grants admin because it never checks if you are authorized to grant admin<p>Shipping at the speed of inference for real.
Title is a bit misleading, no? You have to have openclaw running on an open box. And the post even says "135k open instances" out of 500k running instances? so a bit clickbait-y
1/5 rounds to “probably” when discussing security.
More than 25% of users seems like a pretty accurate "probably".
You know you’re getting into zealot territory when people are arguing semantics over the headline pointing to a <i>zero authentication admin access vulnerability CVE that affects a double-digit percentage of users</i>.
Today I learned nobody agrees on what the word "probably" means.
Here's a statement that's about 3x as true then:<p>If you're running OpenClaw, you probably didn't get hacked in the last week.
This sounds like a classic case of "35% of statistics are made up"
The 135k instances is likely not true at all.
It’s also only 65% of those that have zero authentication configured, according to that post (which I have done nothing to confirm or challenge at all… Frankly I wouldn’t touch OpenClaw with a ten foot… cable?) That said, I think it’s far more important to get people’s attention who might otherwise not realize how closely they need to pay attention to CVEs than it is to avoid hyperbole in headlines.
Someone has to say this, but - If you still continued to use OpenClaw despite multiple top news sites explaining the scope of the previous hacks and why you shouldn't use it, you probably deserved to get hacked
The threads on that /r/sysadmin post sound exactly like every sysadmin I've ever worked with in my career.
Well, such things were to be expected.
It's easy to bash on all the people who haven't gotten the necessary IT understanding of securing such things. Of course, it's uber-dumb to run an unprotected instance.
But at the same time, it's also quite cool that so many people can do interesting IT stuff now.
I'm thinking basically it's a trade-off. Be able to do great stuff, live with the consequences of doing that without proper training.
Like repairing your car yourself. You might have fun doing it, it might get you somewhere, but you have to accept that if you have no idea about cars, you just introduced a pretty big risk into your life (say if you replaced the brakes or something).
But yea, security, privacy, fighting climate change, all very much on the decline - humans doing cool things, ignoring important things - we'll have to live with the consequences.
Gonna be honest. I'd rather fight climate change than have people run LLMs unsecured
With your car example, you also assume the risk unto others. If your "chopper" of a car hits and kills someone else, and you survive, you're paying for the consequences of that. I don't think it's cool that untrained people can do interesting IT stuff now. I see it as a huge liability where some unsecured instance pwns the internet, then it's some 12 year old that gets marched in front of congress and everyone goes: "wtf?" There's essentially no accountability and the damage is still done.
Authorization failed open when a parameter was missing. Same pattern as Langflow. They patched one endpoint, missed another calling the same function. Per-endpoint hardening doesn't scale.
If someone could forward the SSH port from my VPS to access my instance, I already had bigger problems.
If you're running OpenClaw, you already threw security and reliability out the window by running LLMs on the command line. It's a bit late to start worrying now.
Only if your openclaw instance is publicly exposed on the internet... which is not the case for most people
Until recently, this was default configuration<p>Edit: Default binding was to 0.0.0.0, and if you were not aware of this and assumed your router was keeping you safe, you probably should not be using OpenClaw. In fact some services may still default to 0.0.0.0: <a href="https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues/5263" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues/5263</a><p><a href="https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/5643a934799dc523ec2ef18c007e1aa2c386b670" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/5643a934799dc523...</a>
I have used openclaw pretty long but at no point it has proposed doing anything like that.
Not true. So many people love to come out of the woodwork on these openclaw posts who have no first hand knowledge of the software. It is stunning.
Since pretty much the beginning it wasn't and the documentation explicitly warned not to make it public, exposing it to the internet. It included information on how you can properly forward the gateway port to your machine without opening it up to the internet.
OpenClaw has over 400+ security issues and vulnerabilities. [0]<p>Why on earth would you install something like that has access to your entire machine, even if it is a separate one which has the potential to scan local networks?<p>Who is even making money out of OpenClaw other than the people attempting to host it? I see little use out of it other than a way to get yourself hacked by anyone.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/security" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/security</a>
I don't think enabling admin on open internet is a default behaviour by any means?
Guys, OpenClaw is a toy, that's it!
Think of all the people that are too ignorant to even understand the basics of any of this that are running OpenClaw. They will be completely unaware and attackers can easily hide their tracks by changing system prompts (among plenty of other things).<p>This is bad.
Really? Posting AI generated Reddit post with no sources or anything?
The link mentions the CVE, here's the link <a href="https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-33579" rel="nofollow">https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-33579</a>
The CVE seems to be real.
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Could anyone have predicted that giving an agent free reign of your personal hardware could have resulted in bad things happening? not I /s
lol
Your comment is obviously against the rules, but I read it as: Why are people not more careful? This is some unknown, app, with unknown, unvetted depths, and you only like it because other people say it's shiny and AI. It made you giddy, and you forgot that giving a tool permissions is an invitation to hackers. Well, you went ahead and ignored all common sense, and here we are.
I have a theory OpenClaw was built deliberately for malicious reasons under the guise of being something cool and useful.
Hanlon's Razor<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor</a>
In this case I'd say that it was made not to enable that, but in total disregard of its realistic uses and risks. In a sense this is less... deliberate poisoning, and more doing a bad job cutting heroin with fentanyl for distribution. Yeah the result is the same, but the cause is negligence to the point of parody rather than outright malice.
What reason would Steinberger have for doing that? It was his hobby project.
Hackernews is now posting links to reddit AI slop posts that I came here to get away from...