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A supply-chain poisoning campaign dubbed ClawHavoc compromised OpenClaw’s official ClawHub marketplace by distributing 1,184 trojanized “Skills” intended to steal data and establish backdoor access on victim systems. Reporting attributes the initial disclosure to Koi Security, with Antiy CERT later tracking the activity as the TrojanOpenClaw PolySkill family and linking the uploads to 12 publisher accounts (including one responsible for 677 packages). The attackers abused ClawHub’s permissive publishing model (any GitHub account older than one week could upload), mass-posting Skills disguised as crypto trading bots, productivity tools, and social utilities; analysis described behaviors including ClickFix-style download prompts and reverse-shell droppers enabling remote command execution and persistence.
Separately, researchers reported infostealer activity exfiltrating sensitive files from victims’ local OpenClaw directories—openclaw.json, device.json, soul.md, and related memory files—highlighting how AI-agent artifacts can be leveraged beyond traditional credential theft. Hudson Rock assessed the malware as broadly harvesting files by extension rather than explicitly targeting OpenClaw, but warned dedicated modules are likely to emerge to decrypt/parse these agent files. The stolen data could enable attackers to connect to a victim’s local OpenClaw instance (notably if port 18789 is exposed) using gateway.auth.token, and potentially bypass “Safe Device” checks by abusing keys from device.json to sign messages as the victim’s paired device and access connected services.
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5 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
Following the discovery of malicious skills in ClawHub, OpenClaw partnered with Google VirusTotal to scan marketplace uploads and perform recurring rescans to catch malicious or mutated packages. The move was part of OpenClaw's response to the marketplace abuse.
Hudson Rock reported one of the first publicly disclosed cases of infostealer malware exfiltrating sensitive files from the OpenClaw directory, including configuration, device, and memory files. The stolen data could enable remote access to a victim's local OpenClaw instance, message signing as the victim's device, and exposure of personal context.
By February 5, Antiy CERT had classified the malware as the TrojanOpenClaw PolySkill family and identified 1,184 malicious packages tied to 12 publisher accounts. Reporting said the skills used techniques including ClickFix-style lures, reverse-shell droppers, and direct data theft, with some infections delivering Atomic macOS Stealer.
Koi Security disclosed the ClawHavoc supply-chain poisoning campaign affecting OpenClaw's ClawHub marketplace. The disclosure described malicious skills used to steal data, deliver malware, and establish backdoor access through social engineering and embedded malicious instructions.
In late January 2026, multiple threat actors registered as ClawHub developers and uploaded trojanized OpenClaw skills disguised as legitimate tools such as crypto, productivity, and social media utilities. The campaign abused ClawHub's permissive publishing model to seed malware at scale.
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Security researchers reported that the *OpenClaw* self-hosted AI assistant ecosystem is being abused for malware distribution via **ClawHub**, a public registry for third-party “skills.” At least **14 malicious skills** uploaded over a short window masqueraded as crypto trading/wallet automation tools, but were designed to trick users into executing obfuscated setup commands that fetch and run remote scripts. Because OpenClaw skills are installed as executable code (not sandboxed) with access to local files and network resources, successful installs can enable credential theft and cryptocurrency wallet compromise on **Windows and macOS**, and one malicious listing reportedly reached prominent placement before removal, increasing the likelihood of accidental installs. Separate reporting also highlighted a related risk: a **1-click remote code execution (RCE)** issue affecting OpenClaw/Moltbot/ClawdBot was discussed in the security community, indicating that the same ecosystem is facing both supply-chain style extension abuse and potential direct exploitation paths. Organizations allowing developer or power-user adoption of OpenClaw should treat third-party skills as untrusted software, restrict installation sources, and monitor for social-engineering patterns such as “copy/paste this one-liner” installers that retrieve code from external servers—especially when tied to cryptocurrency-themed lures.
Jun 29, 2026
Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 reported that five malicious skills were uploaded to the OpenClaw/ClawHub AI agent marketplace and bypassed platform screening controls, despite ClawHub’s use of VirusTotal and ClawScan. The skills fell into three categories: macOS infostealer delivery, scanner evasion, and agentic abuse for financial gain. Two TradingView-themed skills redirected users through paste sites and used Base64-encoded `curl`-pipe-`bash` execution to install a macOS infostealer called **cluw**, while another skill, **omnicogg**, used a 22 MB padded `README.md` to evade scanning and linked to Atomic macOS Stealer infrastructure associated with `91.92.242[.]30`. Unit 42 also found two skills, **money-radar** and **letssendit**, that abused agent permissions without relying on traditional malware payloads. One forced affiliate-linked recommendations at runtime to generate commissions, while the other coordinated an agentic front-running scheme tied to a Solana meme-token pump-and-dump operation. OpenClaw said the reported accounts were banned and the skills removed from ClawHub, but the incident underscores a growing AI supply chain risk: marketplace skills can manipulate natural-language task execution while inheriting an agent’s authenticated access to files, shells, and credentials.
Jun 29, 2026
Security researchers and media reports warned that the open-source AI agent **OpenClaw** (formerly *Moltbot/Clawdbot*) can be abused via its *ClawHub* “skills” ecosystem, with findings that **~7.1% of marketplace skills** contributed to exposure of **API keys, credentials, and credit card data** due to problematic `SKILL.md` instructions. Snyk highlighted a particularly severe example, **buy-anything skill v2.0.0**, which performs credit-card “tokenization” in a way that can be used to **pilfer financial details** before prompting users to provide card information. Additional research described **indirect prompt-injection** risk: a malicious Google document can coerce OpenClaw into integrating a new **Telegram bot**, enabling follow-on actions such as **file exfiltration** and deployment of a **Sliver** command-and-control beacon for persistence, with potential for **privilege escalation, lateral movement, and ransomware execution**. Separately, one report noted OpenClaw’s move to scan skills with **VirusTotal**, but also emphasized that signature-based scanning is not a complete mitigation for **prompt-injection** and other logic-level abuses; other items in the same news roundup (e.g., telecom “Salt Typhoon” oversight) were unrelated to OpenClaw’s vulnerabilities.
Jun 29, 2026