CVE-2026-35669
Published: 10 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-35669 is a high-severity Incorrect Use of Privileged APIs (CWE-648) vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw. Its CVSS base score is 8.7 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 21.3th 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 AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-35669 is a privilege escalation vulnerability (CWE-648: Incorrect Handling of Functional Options or Parameters) affecting OpenClaw versions before 2026.3.25. The flaw exists in gateway-authenticated plugin HTTP routes, which incorrectly mint the operator.admin runtime scope regardless of the scopes granted to the caller. This scope boundary bypass allows attackers to gain elevated privileges and perform unauthorized administrative actions. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and was published on 2026-04-10.
An attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network with low attack complexity and no user interaction required. By leveraging the misconfigured HTTP routes in the gateway-authenticated plugin, the attacker bypasses intended scope restrictions to obtain operator.admin runtime scope. This enables execution of unauthorized administrative actions, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Advisories recommend upgrading to OpenClaw 2026.3.25 or later, where the issue is addressed in GitHub commit ec2dbcff9afd8a52e00de054b506c91726d9fbbe. Additional details on the vulnerability and remediation are provided in the GitHub security advisory at https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/security/advisories/GHSA-qm2m-28pf-hgjw and the VulnCheck advisory at https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/openclaw-privilege-escalation-via-gateway-plugin-http-authentication-scope.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-21484
Vulnerability details
OpenClaw before 2026.3.25 contains a privilege escalation vulnerability in gateway-authenticated plugin HTTP routes that incorrectly mint operator.admin runtime scope regardless of caller-granted scopes. Attackers can exploit this scope boundary bypass to gain elevated privileges and perform unauthorized administrative actions.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability is a scope boundary bypass in authenticated HTTP routes that grants operator.admin privileges to low-privileged callers, directly enabling exploitation for privilege escalation.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces least privilege to prevent gateway-authenticated plugin HTTP routes from minting unauthorized operator.admin runtime scope beyond caller-granted scopes.
Mandates enforcement of approved authorizations in HTTP routes, blocking privilege escalation from incorrect scope boundary bypass.
Requires system access control decisions to validate caller scopes accurately, preventing low-privilege attackers from gaining elevated administrative access.