GHSA-p536-vvpp-9mc8 CVE-2026-28394
OpenClaw has a Web Fetch DoS via unbounded response parsing
- Severity
- 6.9 / 10
- Medium · CVSS 4.0
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.46%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 40.08% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- Fix
2026.2.15- Upgrade openclaw to this version or later
Description
Summary
The web_fetch tool could be used to crash the OpenClaw Gateway process (OOM / resource exhaustion) by fetching and attempting to parse attacker-controlled web pages with oversized response bodies or pathological HTML nesting.
Affected Packages / Versions
- Package:
openclaw(npm) - Affected versions:
<= 2026.2.14 - Fixed versions:
>= 2026.2.15
Impact
An attacker can social-engineer a user (or any automation that uses web_fetch) into fetching a malicious URL that returns extremely large or deeply nested HTML. The Gateway may exhaust memory or become unresponsive, causing a denial of service.
Fix
The Gateway now caps the downloaded response body size before any HTML parsing and adds additional guards to avoid running Readability/DOM parsing on pathological HTML.
Fix Commit(s)
- 166cf6a3e04c7df42bea70a7ad5ce2b9df46d147
Release Process Note
This advisory is prepared for the next npm release. Once openclaw@2026.2.15 is published, publish this advisory without further edits.
Thanks @xuemian168 for reporting.
Affected versions
npm
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| openclaw | < 2026.2.15 |
2026.2.15 |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
openclaw npm → 2026.2.15
- npm
npm install openclaw@2026.2.15- yarn
yarn add openclaw@2026.2.15- pnpm
pnpm add openclaw@2026.2.15
Severity breakdown
CVSS 4.0 6.9
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Active
- Confidentiality (vulnerable system)
- None
- Integrity (vulnerable system)
- None
- Availability (vulnerable system)
- High
- Confidentiality (subsequent systems)
- None
- Integrity (subsequent systems)
- None
- Availability (subsequent systems)
- None
- Exploit maturity
- Not defined
- Scope
- X
CVSS 3.1 6.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
- Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
- Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-3x84-qq85-fj65 OpenClaw: Browser CDP discovery could accept blocked WebSocket URLs | High | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-9c3v-684m-579c OpenClaw MCP SSE redirects could forward Authorization headers | Medium | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-f397-5vjw-v2c2 OpenClaw: Shell inline-command parsing could miss an allowlist check | High | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-rx78-29qr-5hq8 OpenClaw: Workspace-derived service PATH could influence trash command selection | High | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-ccwh-wwpp-6wg5 OpenClaw: Host environment sanitizer missed two Node.js control variables | High | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-985f-72mj-8gf7 OpenClaw: Tool group policy callers could accept unvalidated group IDs | Medium | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-9v8j-9c9g-w66c OpenClaw: Bootstrap token replay could widen pending pairing scopes | Medium | Also affects openclaw |
| GHSA-c226-q6fx-6j6c OpenClaw: macOS Swift exec allowlist missed combined POSIX inline flags | Medium | Also affects openclaw |
MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.
Check your repos with MergeHarbor