CVE-2026-41331
Openclaw ≤ 2026.3.31
Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/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:XSummary
CVE-2026-41331 is a medium-severity Incorrect Behavior Order: Early Amplification (CWE-408) vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw. Its CVSS base score is 6.9 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application Exhaustion Flood (T1499.003); ranked at the 22th 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 map to AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-6 (Least Privilege) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-24020
Vulnerability Data
OpenClaw before 2026.3.31 contains a resource consumption vulnerability in Telegram audio preflight transcription that allows unauthorized group senders to trigger transcription processing. Attackers can exploit insufficient allowlist enforcement to cause resource or billing consumption by initiating audio preflight operations before…
more
authorization checks are applied.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Vulnerability enables pre-auth resource-intensive transcription processing, directly facilitating application exhaustion via abuse of a costly feature.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly enforces authorization decisions before permitting resource-intensive audio transcription operations, blocking the premature preflight path described in the CVE.
Limits which accounts or group senders are granted the privilege to initiate transcription, reducing the attack surface from unauthorized callers.
Requires validation of sender identity and authorization attributes on input before any transcription processing or resource allocation occurs.
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.
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.
Access control policies that enforce authentication before resource-intensive operations directly prevent early amplification.
Identity management ensures entities are identified and authenticated prior to performing expensive actions.
Access rights provisioning can restrict expensive operations until authorization is granted.
Privileged access rights limit who can perform costly actions but do not enforce authentication order.
Information access restriction mechanisms can block resource-intensive operations until authentication succeeds.
Secure authentication ensures identity verification occurs before expensive operations are allowed.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that reduce the attack surface for weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Derived transitively via CVE→CWE→STIG over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only).
Ubuntu 22.04 (1 rule)
- V-260470 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, when booted, must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes. via CWE-408