CVE-2026-22217
Published: 18 March 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-22217 is a medium-severity Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere (CWE-829) vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw. Its CVSS base score is 5.8 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 4.8th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-22217, published on 2026-03-18, is an arbitrary code execution vulnerability affecting OpenClaw versions 2026.2.22 prior to 2026.2.23. The issue resides in the shell-env component and arises from exploitation of trusted-prefix fallback logic for the $SHELL environment variable, mapped to CWE-829 (Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere). It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 6.1 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L).
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability by influencing the $SHELL environment variable on systems where trusted-prefix directories, such as /opt/homebrew/bin, are writable. Successful exploitation enables execution of attacker-controlled binaries within the OpenClaw process context, potentially leading to integrity and availability impacts despite no confidentiality loss.
Advisories recommend updating to OpenClaw version 2026.2.23 or later to mitigate the issue. The fixing commit is available at https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/ff10fe8b91670044a6bb0cd85deb736a0ec8fb55, with further details in the GitHub security advisory at https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/security/advisories/GHSA-p4wh-cr8m-gm6c and the VulnCheck advisory at https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/openclaw-arbitrary-binary-execution-via-shell-environment-variable-trusted-prefix-fallback.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-12730
Vulnerability details
OpenClaw version 2026.2.22 prior to 2026.2.23 contains an arbitrary code execution vulnerability in shell-env that allows attackers to execute attacker-controlled binaries by exploiting trusted-prefix fallback logic for the $SHELL variable. An attacker can influence the $SHELL environment variable on systems…
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with writable trusted-prefix directories such as /opt/homebrew/bin to execute arbitrary binaries in the OpenClaw process context.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Local arbitrary binary execution via $SHELL env var manipulation directly enables privilege escalation (T1068) and execution flow hijack analogous to path/env interception (T1574).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly addresses the CVE by requiring prompt application of the vendor patch (v2026.2.23) that removes the trusted-prefix fallback logic for $SHELL.
Enforces access-control policy on directories such as /opt/homebrew/bin so that untrusted users cannot place attacker-controlled binaries in locations the OpenClaw shell-env logic will execute.
Requires validation of the $SHELL environment variable (and its resolved path) before use, blocking the untrusted-control-sphere inclusion that enables the arbitrary-binary execution.