Affected: OpenClaw

OpenClaw versions prior to 2026.2.22 contain an arbitrary shell execution vulnerability in shell environment fallback that trusts the unvalidated SHELL path from the host environment. An attacker with local environment access can inject a malicious SHELL variable to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the OpenClaw process.

Affected: npm: openclaw

The shell environment fallback path could invoke an attacker-controlled shell when `SHELL` was inherited from an untrusted host environment. In affected builds, shell-env loading used `$SHELL -l -c 'env -0'` without validating that `SHELL` points to a trusted executable.

In threat-model terms, this requires local environment compromise or untrusted startup environment injection first; it is not a remote pre-auth path. The hardening patch validates `SHELL` as an absolute normalized executable, prefers `/etc/shells`, applies trusted-prefix fallback checks, and falls back safely to `/bin/sh` when validation fails. The dangerous env-var policy now also blocks `SHELL` overrides.

## Affected Packages / Versions - Package: `openclaw` (npm) - Affected versions: `<= 2026.2.21-2` - Latest published vulnerable version: `2026.2.21-2` - Patched versions (planned next release): `>= 2026.2.22`

## Fix Commit(s) - `25e89cc86338ef475d26be043aa541dfdb95e52a`

## Release Process Note The advisory pre-sets `patched_versions` to the planned next release (`2026.2.22`). After that npm release is published, maintainers can publish this advisory without further version-field edits.

OpenClaw thanks @athuljayaram for reporting.