Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-27576

DoS in Openclaw ≤ 2026.2.17

Published
21 February 2026
Modified
23 February 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 4.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS Score 0.0016 6th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-27576 is a medium-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw. Its CVSS base score is 4.8 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 6th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as Enterprise AI Assistants; in the LLM/Generative AI Risks risk domain.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant. In versions 2026.2.17 and below, the ACP bridge accepts very large prompt text blocks and can assemble oversized prompt payloads before forwarding them to chat.send. Because ACP runs over local stdio, this mainly affects…

more

local ACP clients (for example IDE integrations) that send unusually large inputs. This issue has been fixed in version 2026.2.19.

CWE(s)

AI Security AnalysisAI

AI Category
Enterprise AI Assistants
Risk Domain
LLM/Generative AI Risks
OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
None mapped
Classification Reason
Matched keywords: ai

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
Why these techniques?

CWE-400 resource exhaustion from oversized prompt payloads directly enables application exhaustion via crafted large inputs.

Confidence: MEDIUM · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-41362Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-32044Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-35633Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-41374Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-42420Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-41408Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-29612Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-22178Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-35627Same product: Openclaw Openclaw
CVE-2026-28394Same product: Openclaw Openclaw

Affected Assets

openclaw
openclaw
≤ 2026.2.17

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • SI-10 Information Input Validation
  • SC-6 Resource Availability
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)
  • SI-4 System Monitoring
Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Directly enforces validation of input size and format, rejecting the oversized prompt text blocks that trigger uncontrolled resource consumption in the ACP bridge.

prevent

Allocates finite resources (quotas/priority) to the chat.send path, limiting the impact of large payloads assembled from local stdio before they exhaust memory or CPU.

detect

Monitors for anomalous resource consumption or unusually large inputs on local ACP interfaces, enabling early detection of the oversized prompt assembly behavior.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.IR-04 mostly match
prevents

Explicitly requires monitoring and maintaining resource capacity, directly addressing uncontrolled consumption to preserve availability.

DE.CM-09 partial match
prevents

Continuous monitoring of computing resources can detect resource exhaustion but does not itself enforce allocation limits.

PR.IR-03 partial match
prevents

Resilience mechanisms such as avoiding single points of failure indirectly reduce impact of resource exhaustion.

PR.PS-01 partial match
prevents

Hardened configuration baselines can include resource quotas and limits that constrain consumption.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

detects

Resource-utilization monitoring and alerting on bottlenecks or overloads limits the impact of denial-of-service or resource-exhaustion attacks.

prevents

By continuously monitoring utilization, stress-testing peak loads, and maintaining documented plans to scale or throttle resources, the control directly limits an attacker’s ability to drive a system into uncontrolled resource exhaustion.

detects

Pre-agreed severity-based prioritization and resource allocation during incident triage reduce the likelihood that an attacker-induced resource exhaustion will overwhelm the organization before corrective action is taken.

mitigates

Business-continuity plans that include resource-management controls reduce the likelihood that an attacker can trigger uncontrolled resource consumption by forcing the system into a degraded or fallback state.

mitigates

Defining RTOs and capacity requirements for ICT services during business-impact analysis forces organizations to provision sufficient resources and throttling mechanisms, reducing the likelihood that an attacker can induce denial-of-service through uncontrolled resource consumption.

detects

Early notification of anomalous resource consumption or system malfunctions enables throttling or isolation before availability is lost.

References