GHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff
HIGHGHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-863 vulnerability in openclaw. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
OpenClaw: Scoped chat.send route inheritance could bypass admin command scope gates
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-hw9r-h9mr-4jff.
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
Some internal command handlers require operator.approvals or operator.admin scopes. In affected releases, a scoped Gateway chat.send request delivered through an inherited external route could be evaluated as an external-channel command while still carrying the lower Gateway client scopes.
This issue affects scoped Gateway clients. It does not apply to shared-secret bearer HTTP compatibility endpoints, which are documented as full operator surfaces under OpenClaw's trust model.
Affected configurations
This affects deployments where a scoped Gateway caller with operator.write can use chat.send with delivery into a session that has an inherited external delivery route.
Impact
Commands that should have required operator.approvals or operator.admin could run with only operator.write in this routed context. Affected command families included approval resolution and selected administrative commands such as plugin, config, MCP, allowlist, and ACP mutations.
Patched Versions
The first stable patched version is 2026.5.18.
Mitigations
Upgrade to [email protected] or later. Before upgrading, avoid granting operator.write tokens to clients that can deliver commands into sessions with external routes unless those clients are trusted with admin-like command effects.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | openclaw | all versions | 2026.5.18 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for openclaw. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update openclaw to 2026.5.18 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff. 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-hw9r-h9mr-4jff in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-hw9r-h9mr-4jff across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.