🔴 CVE-2026-28363 — Security Advisory

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📋 Executive Summary

🎯 Vulnerability Description

The CVE-2026-28363 vulnerability resides in OpenClaw's tools.exec.safeBins validation logic. Specifically, the flaw is triggered when the sort command is used within the allowlist mode.

How does the flaw work?

ATTACKER                     OPENCLAW SYSTEM               TARGET SYSTEM
   │                               │                               │
   │  sort --compress-prog=...     │                               │
   │──────────────────────────────>│                               │
   │                               │  ❌ Validation failed         │
   │                               │  (does not recognize abbreviation) │
   │                               │──────────────────────────────>│
   │                               │                               │ ⚠️ RCE

The system does not recognize abbreviations of GNU long options. For example:

• ✅ --compress-program → recognized and correctly blocked
• ❌ --compress-prog → NOT recognized, bypasses validation

This difference allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on paths the system intended to protect, completely bypassing the allowlist mechanism.

📊 CVSS 3.1 Metrics

Attack Vector (AV)      ████████████████████  NETWORK
Attack Complexity (AC)  ████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  LOW
Privileges Required     ████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  NONE
User Interaction (UI)   ████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  NONE
Scope (S)               ████████████████████  CHANGED
Confidentiality (C)     ████████████████████  HIGH
Integrity (I)           ████████████████████  HIGH
Availability (A)        ████████████████████  HIGH

                        FINAL SCORE: 9.9 ████████████████████ CRITICAL

🛡️ Solution and Mitigation

✅ Primary Solution (RECOMMENDED)

Update immediately to OpenClaw 2026.2.23 or later.

# With npm
npm update openclaw

# Verify installed version
npm list openclaw

# Update to specific version
npm install [email protected]

🔧 Temporary Mitigations

If updating is not possible immediately, apply the following measures in order of priority:

1. 🔍 Monitoring of Suspicious Events

Monitor calls to the sort command with abbreviated options:

# Example audit rule (auditd)
auditctl -w /usr/bin/sort -p x -k openclaw_sort_watch

# Review logs in real time
ausearch -k openclaw_sort_watch -ts recent

2. 🔒 Host-Level Access Control

AppArmor — restrictive profile for OpenClaw:

/usr/bin/sort {
  # Deny execution with --compress-prog*
  deny /usr/bin/* x,
}

SELinux — confinement policy:

# Generate confinement policy for OpenClaw
ausearch -m avc -ts recent | audit2allow -M openclaw_policy
semodule -i openclaw_policy.pp

3. 📡 OpenClaw Security Monitor

Use the official OpenClaw Security Monitor tool to detect exploitation attempts in real time:

# Start monitor in detection mode
openclaw-monitor --watch --alert-level critical --cve CVE-2026-28363

📦 Affected Versions

Main affected platform: OpenClaw for Node.js

🔗 References and Resources

🕒 Timeline

Discovery ──────────────── Disclosure ──────────────── Patch
      │                               │                        │
  [Researcher]              [NIST / GHSA]             [v2026.2.23]
      │                               │                        │
      └───────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┘
                      Responsible disclosure process

⚖️ Legal and Ethical Notice

This document is provided solely for educational and defensive purposes.
Exploiting this vulnerability on systems without explicit authorization constitutes a crime under multiple international legislations, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the U.S. and equivalent regulations in Latin America and Europe.

If you discover this vulnerability on a production system, report it responsibly to the corresponding security team.