CVE-2026-32000
Published: 19 March 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-32000 is a high-severity OS Command Injection (CWE-78) vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Windows Command Shell (T1059.003); ranked at the 18.9th 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-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Flaw remediation directly mitigates CVE-2026-32000 by applying patches to eliminate the insecure shell fallback in OpenClaw Lobster tool execution.
Information input validation prevents injection of shell metacharacters into command arguments used in subprocess execution.
Error handling ensures subprocess spawn failures due to EINVAL or ENOENT do not trigger insecure shell fallback, reducing command injection risk.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Command injection (CWE-78) via Windows shell fallback (shell:true) after subprocess failure directly enables arbitrary OS command execution as the T1059.003 Windows Command Shell technique.
NVD Description
OpenClaw versions prior to 2026.2.19 contain a command injection vulnerability in the Lobster extension tool execution that uses Windows shell fallback with shell: true after spawn failures. Attackers can inject shell metacharacters in command arguments to execute arbitrary commands when…
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subprocess launch fails with EINVAL or ENOENT errors.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-32000 is a command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) affecting OpenClaw versions prior to 2026.2.19. The issue resides in the Lobster extension tool execution on Windows, where the implementation falls back to using the Windows shell with shell: true after subprocess spawn failures. This allows attackers to inject shell metacharacters into command arguments, enabling arbitrary command execution specifically when the subprocess launch fails due to EINVAL or ENOENT errors. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.1 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H) and was published on 2026-03-19.
A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability by crafting command arguments containing shell metacharacters, triggering the condition during a failed spawn attempt. Successful exploitation leads to arbitrary command execution on the target system, resulting in high integrity (I:H) and availability (A:H) impacts, though no confidentiality impact (C:N).
Advisories and the patch commit recommend upgrading to OpenClaw version 2026.2.19 or later, where the fix addresses the insecure shell fallback in Lobster tool execution. Details are available in the GitHub security advisory (GHSA-7fcc-cw49-xm78), the fixing commit (ba7be018da354ea9f803ed356d20464df0437916), and VulnCheck's analysis.
Details
- CWE(s)