GHSA-xvhf-x56f-2hpp is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.7) OS Command Injection vulnerability in openclaw. A fix is available for openclaw — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenClaw exec approvals: safeBins could bypass stdin-only constraints via shell expansion
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-xvhf-x56f-2hpp.
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-xvhf-x56f-2hpp 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 376,715 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
OpenClaw's exec-approvals allowlist supports a small set of "safe bins" intended to be stdin-only (no positional file arguments) when running tools.exec.host=gateway|node with security=allowlist.
In affected configurations, the allowlist validation checked pre-expansion argv tokens, but execution used a real shell (sh -c) which expands globs and environment variables. This allowed safe bins like head, tail, or grep to read arbitrary local files via tokens such as * or $HOME/... without triggering approvals.
This issue is configuration-dependent and is not exercised by default settings (default tools.exec.host is sandbox).
Affected Packages / Versions
- Package:
openclaw(npm) - Affected:
<= 2026.2.13 - Patched:
>= 2026.2.14(planned; publish the advisory after the npm release is out)
Impact
An authorized but untrusted caller (or prompt-injection) could cause the gateway/node process to disclose files readable by that process when host execution is enabled in allowlist mode.
Fix
Safe-bins executions now force argv tokens to be treated as literal text at execution time (single-quoted), preventing globbing and $VARS expansion from turning "safe" tokens into file paths.
Fix Commit(s)
- 77b89719d5b7e271f48b6f49e334a8b991468c3b
Release Process Note
patched_versions is pre-set for the next planned release (>= 2026.2.14) so publishing is a single click once that npm version is available.
Thanks @christos-eth for reporting.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | openclaw | all versions | 2026.2.14npm install openclaw@2026.2.14 |
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 2026.2.14 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-xvhf-x56f-2hpp 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-xvhf-x56f-2hpp can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-xvhf-x56f-2hpp. 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-xvhf-x56f-2hpp in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-xvhf-x56f-2hpp across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.