GHSA-qw99-grcx-4pvm is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-1327 vulnerability in openclaw. A fix is available for openclaw — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenClaw's Chrome extension relay binds publicly due to wildcard treated as loopback
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-qw99-grcx-4pvm.
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-qw99-grcx-4pvm 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 379,145 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
The Chrome extension relay (ensureChromeExtensionRelayServer) previously treated wildcard hosts (0.0.0.0 / ::) as loopback, which could make it bind the relay HTTP/WS server to all interfaces when a wildcard cdpUrl was passed.
Impact
If configured with a wildcard cdpUrl, relay HTTP endpoints could become reachable off-host, leaking service presence/port and enabling DoS/brute-force traffic against the relay token header.
Affected Packages / Versions
- Package:
openclaw(npm) - Affected:
>= 2026.1.14-1 < 2026.2.12
Fixed Versions
- Patched:
>= 2026.2.12(released 2026-02-13)
Fix Commit(s)
- 8d75a496bf5aaab1755c56cf48502d967c75a1d0
Notes
- Earlier hardening for
/json*auth and/cdptoken checks landed in:- a1e89afcc19efd641c02b24d66d689f181ae2b5c
Thanks @qi-scape for reporting.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | openclaw | ≥ 2026.1.14-1&&< 2026.2.12 | 2026.2.12npm install openclaw@2026.2.12 |
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 2026.2.12 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-qw99-grcx-4pvm is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-qw99-grcx-4pvm can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-qw99-grcx-4pvm. 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-qw99-grcx-4pvm in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-qw99-grcx-4pvm across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.