What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-22177: OpenClaw < 2026.2.21 - Environment Variable Injection via Config env.vars

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-03-18 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-15

Description

OpenClaw versions prior to 2026.2.21 fail to filter dangerous process-control environment variables from config env.vars, allowing startup-time code execution. Attackers can inject variables like NODE_OPTIONS or LD_* through configuration to execute arbitrary code in the OpenClaw gateway service runtime context.

Affected products

• OpenClaw: before 2026.2.21 — fixed in 2026.2.21

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: OpenClaw 2026.2.21. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/2cdbadee1f8fcaa93302d7debbfc529e19868ea4
• https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/security/advisories/GHSA-8fmp-37rc-p5g7
• https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/security/advisories/GHSA-w9j9-w4cp-6wgr
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/openclaw-environment-variable-injection-via-config-env-vars

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