GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.8) CWE-639 vulnerability in openclaw. A fix is available for openclaw — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenClaw: Trailing-dot localhost CDP hosts could bypass remote loopback protections
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
openclawnpmDescription
Summary
Before OpenClaw 2026.4.2, remote CDP discovery could return a trailing-dot localhost host such as localhost. and bypass OpenClaw's loopback-host normalization. That let a non-loopback remote CDP profile pivot the follow-up connection back onto localhost.
Impact
A hostile discovery response could retarget authenticated browser control toward a localhost-resolving endpoint on the OpenClaw host. This weakened the existing remote-CDP loopback protection and could expose localhost-backed browser state.
Affected Packages / Versions
- Package:
openclaw(npm) - Affected versions:
<= 2026.4.1 - Patched versions:
>= 2026.4.2 - Latest published npm version:
2026.4.1
Fix Commit(s)
9c22d636697336a6b22b0ae24798d8b8325d7828— normalize localhost absolute-form CDP hosts before loopback checks
Release Process Note
The fix is present on main and is staged for OpenClaw 2026.4.2. Publish this advisory after the 2026.4.2 npm release is live.
Thanks @smaeljaish771 for reporting.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | openclaw | all versions | 2026.4.2npm install openclaw@2026.4.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for openclaw, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update openclaw to 2026.4.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-fh32-73r9-rgh5 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.