OpenClaw AI Assistant Local WebSocket Exposure Enables Browser Session Hijacking
A critical vulnerability in the OpenClaw AI Assistant (aka Clawdbot) allows a malicious website opened in the same browser session to connect to a locally exposed relay service and abuse the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) to hijack browser sessions and steal credentials. Reporting indicates the extension starts a local server on 127.0.0.1:17892 and exposes WebSocket endpoints including /cdp; due to insufficient origin validation, attacker-controlled JavaScript can connect to ws://127.0.0.1:17892/cdp, enumerate tabs, and issue CDP commands (e.g., Runtime.evaluate) to extract cookies/session tokens or execute script in other tabs, impacting high-value services such as Gmail and Microsoft 365. Proof-of-concept code is publicly available and exploitation has been demonstrated, making the attack low-effort and high-impact for affected users.
The issue has reportedly been patched in the latest OpenClaw release, and organizations using the extension should update immediately and assess exposure for potential session-token theft. Separate from OpenClaw, Plone CMS maintainers reported stopping a supply-chain attempt after an attacker used a stolen GitHub personal access token to force-push whitespace-obfuscated malicious code into multiple repositories; the changes were detected before any official release and were assessed as targeting developers rather than Plone site visitors.
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