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GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8

GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8: OpenClaw: Process Safety - Unvalidated PID Kill via SIGKILL in Process Cleanup

Summary

OpenClaw CLI process cleanup used system-wide process enumeration and pattern matching to terminate processes without verifying they were owned by the current OpenClaw process. On shared hosts, unrelated processes could be terminated if they matched the pattern.

Affected Packages / Versions

Package: openclaw (npm)
Affected: < 2026.2.14 (including the latest published version 2026.2.13)
Fixed: 2026.2.14 (planned next release)

Details

The CLI runner cleanup helpers could kill processes matched by command-line patterns without validating process ownership.

Fix

Process cleanup is now scoped to owned processes only by filtering to direct child PIDs of the current process (ppid == process.pid) before sending signals.

Hardening follow-ups:

Prefer graceful termination for resume cleanup (SIGTERM, then SIGKILL fallback).
Reduce false negatives from ps argv truncation by preferring wide output (ps -axww) with a fallback.
Tighten command-line token matching to avoid substring matches.

Fix Commit(s)

6084d13b956119e3cf95daaf9a1cae1670ea3557
eb60e2e1b213740c3c587a7ba4dbf10da620ca66

Release Process Note

This advisory is pre-set with patched version 2026.2.14. After 2026.2.14 is published to npm, the remaining step should be to publish this advisory.

Thanks @aether-ai-agent for reporting.

(GitHub Advisory)

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GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8

GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8:

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Technical Details

Package Name	Ecosystem	Vulnerable Versions	First Patched Version
openclaw	npm	< 2026.2.14	2026.2.14

Technical Details

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Root Cause Analysis

The vulnerability lies in the OpenClaw CLI's process cleanup mechanism, which could terminate processes not owned by the OpenClaw agent. This was due to the use of broad, pattern-based process killing commands without verifying process ownership. The analysis of the provided patches pinpoints the exact functions responsible for this behavior and the changes made to mitigate the risk.

The two vulnerable functions identified are cleanupResumeProcesses and cleanupSuspendedCliProcesses located in src/agents/cli-runner/helpers.ts.

In its vulnerable state, cleanupResumeProcesses used pkill -f to find and kill processes. This command kills any process whose command line matches the provided pattern, regardless of which user or parent process spawned it. On a multi-user system or a system with many processes, this could easily lead to terminating critical, unrelated processes.

Similarly, cleanupSuspendedCliProcesses would parse the output of the ps command to find suspended processes matching a certain command pattern. However, it failed to check the parent process ID (PPID). Without this check, it was possible to kill a suspended process belonging to another user or application that happened to match the command pattern.

The fix, as seen in commit 6084d13b956119e3cf95daaf9a1cae1670ea3557, addresses this by modifying both functions to fetch the PPID along with other process information. A check is then performed to ensure that the PPID of the process to be killed matches the PID of the current OpenClaw process (process.pid). This ensures that only direct child processes are terminated.

Further hardening was done in commit eb60e2e1b213740c3c587a7ba4dbf10da620ca66 to prefer a graceful SIGTERM before resorting to SIGKILL, and to improve the command-line matching logic to prevent false positives from substring matches. These changes, while not fixing the core ownership vulnerability, represent good practice in process management.

Vulnerable functions

cleanupResumeProcesses

src/agents/cli-runner/helpers.ts

The function `cleanupResumeProcesses` was vulnerable because it used `pkill -f` to terminate processes based on a command-line pattern. This command does not verify process ownership, allowing it to terminate any process on the system that matches the pattern, not just those started by the OpenClaw agent. The fix replaces this with a mechanism that fetches the parent process ID (PPID) using `ps` and only kills processes that are direct children of the current process.

cleanupSuspendedCliProcesses

src/agents/cli-runner/helpers.ts

The function `cleanupSuspendedCliProcesses` was vulnerable because it identified processes to kill based on their state and command line, without verifying that they were child processes of the OpenClaw agent. This could lead to the termination of unrelated processes on a shared host. The patch adds a check to ensure that the parent process ID (PPID) of a potential target process matches the PID of the current process, thus restricting termination to child processes only.

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WAF Rule

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Reasoning

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GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8: OpenClaw: Process Safety - Unvalidated PID Kill via SIGKILL in Process Cleanup

Summary

Affected Packages / Versions

Details

Fix

Fix Commit(s)

Release Process Note

GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8:

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Vulnerable functions

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GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8: OpenClaw: Process Safety - Unvalidated PID Kill via SIGKILL in Process Cleanup

Summary

Affected Packages / Versions

Details

Fix

Fix Commit(s)

Release Process Note

Vulnerability Intelligence
Miggo AI

Vulnerability Intelligence
Miggo AI

Vulnerability Intelligence
Miggo AI