OpenClaw: Process Safety - Unvalidated PID Kill via SIGKILL in Process CleanupGHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8
Fix: openclaw/openclaw@6084d13GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8 is a CWE-283 vulnerability in openclaw. A fix is available for openclaw — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
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
OpenClaw CLI process cleanup used system-wide process enumeration and pattern matching to terminate processes without verifying they were owned by the current OpenClaw process. On shared hosts, unrelated processes could be terminated if they matched the pattern.
Affected Packages / Versions
- Package:
openclaw(npm) - Affected:
< 2026.2.14(including the latest published version2026.2.13) - Fixed:
2026.2.14(planned next release)
Details
The CLI runner cleanup helpers could kill processes matched by command-line patterns without validating process ownership.
Fix
Process cleanup is now scoped to owned processes only by filtering to direct child PIDs of the current process (ppid == process.pid) before sending signals.
Hardening follow-ups:
- Prefer graceful termination for resume cleanup (
SIGTERM, thenSIGKILLfallback). - Reduce false negatives from
psargv truncation by preferring wide output (ps -axww) with a fallback. - Tighten command-line token matching to avoid substring matches.
Fix Commit(s)
- 6084d13b956119e3cf95daaf9a1cae1670ea3557
- eb60e2e1b213740c3c587a7ba4dbf10da620ca66
Release Process Note
This advisory is pre-set with patched version 2026.2.14. After 2026.2.14 is published to npm, the remaining step should be to publish this advisory.
Thanks @aether-ai-agent for reporting.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | openclaw | all versions | 2026.2.14npm install openclaw@2026.2.14 |
Affected Products
openclawopenclawDetection & 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 2026.2.14 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.