CVE-2026-35650
Published: 10 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-35650 is a high-severity External Control of System or Configuration Setting (CWE-15) vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 21.5th 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 SC-4 (Information in Shared System Resources) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly addresses inconsistent sanitization paths by requiring validation of environment variable inputs to block malformed or blocked override keys.
Prevents unauthorized information transfer via shared system resources like environment variables in multi-tenant shared host environments.
Mitigates the vulnerability through identification and correction of the flaw via patching to patched OpenClaw versions.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability enables remote arbitrary code execution via environment variable override bypass in a network-accessible application (AV:N), directly facilitating T1190 for exploiting public-facing apps and T1059 for command/script execution in the application's context.
NVD Description
OpenClaw before 2026.3.22 contains an environment variable override handling vulnerability that allows attackers to bypass the shared host environment policy through inconsistent sanitization paths. Attackers can supply blocked or malformed override keys that slip through inconsistent validation to execute arbitrary…
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code with unintended environment variables.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-35650 is an environment variable override handling vulnerability in OpenClaw versions prior to 2026.3.22. The flaw stems from inconsistent sanitization paths that allow attackers to bypass the shared host environment policy. By supplying blocked or malformed override keys that evade validation, adversaries can execute arbitrary code while setting unintended environment variables, as classified under CWE-15. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).
Attackers with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this over the network (AV:N), though it requires high attack complexity (AC:H) and no user interaction (UI:N). In a shared host environment, such as multi-tenant systems, a low-privileged user could supply specially crafted environment variable overrides to slip past sanitization checks. Successful exploitation enables high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations (C:H/I:H/A:H), including arbitrary code execution under the application's context with manipulated environment variables.
Mitigation is addressed in OpenClaw version 2026.3.22 and later, with fixes detailed in GitHub commits 630f1479c44f78484dfa21bb407cbe6f171dac87 and 7abfff756d6c68d17e21d1657bbacbaec86de232. The official security advisory at GHSA-39pp-xp36-q6mg and VulnCheck's analysis recommend immediate upgrades to patched versions to resolve the inconsistent validation logic.
Details
- CWE(s)