Security audit
Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk
The scanners mark this skill suspicious, mainly because its guest installation uses an unauthenticated HTTP package source; confidence is medium and the evidence is incomplete.
Before installing, consider whether you trust the package source and can verify the package independently; an unauthenticated HTTP source could allow a substituted package to run. The scan covered the listed Markdown component, but Skillspector marked its analysis partial because local path-like references could not be resolved, so the evidence is incomplete.
SKILL.mdGuest installation uses an unauthenticated HTTP package source
A substituted package can execute attacker-controlled code in the guest, potentially as root in the documented fresh-install variant.
Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
- Preferred entrypoint: `pnpm test:parallels:npm-update`
- For a macOS-only published release update check, use:
- `timeout --foreground 75m pnpm test:parallels:npm-update -- --platform macos --package-spec openclaw@<old-version> --update-target <target-version-or-tag> --json`
This keeps the same-guest `openclaw update --tag ...` coverage and uses the shared macOS current-user/sudo fallback without starting Windows/Linux lanes.
- Required coverage: every release/update regression run must include both lanes:
- fresh snapshot -> install requested package/baseline -> smoke
- same guest baseline -> run the guest's installed `openclaw update ...` command -> smoke again
Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
t today, use `Ubuntu 26.04`.
- On macOS same-guest update checks, restart the gateway after the npm upgrade before `gateway status` / `agent`; launchd can otherwise report a loaded service while the old process has exited and the fresh process is not RPC-ready yet.
- The npm-update aggregate's macOS update leg writes the guest update script as root, then runs it as the desktop user. If `prlctl exec "$MACOS_VM" --current-user ...` cannot authenticate, retry through plain root `prlctl exec` plus `sudo -u <desktop-user> /usr/bin/env HOME=/Users/<desktop-user> USER=<desktop-user> LOGNAME=<desktop-user> PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/opt/node/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin ...`. That is a Parallels transport fallback; still verify `openclaw --version`, gateway RPC, and an agent turn after the update.
- On Windows same-guest update checks, restart the gateway after the npm upgrade before `gateway status` / `agent`; in-place global npm updates can otherwise leave stale hashed `dist/*
Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
-sensitive behavior matters.
- Multi-word `openclaw agent --message ...` checks should go through a guest shell wrapper (`guest_current_user_sh` / `guest_current_user_cli` or `/bin/sh -lc ...`), not raw `prlctl exec ... node openclaw.mjs ...`, or the message can be split into extra argv tokens and Commander reports `too many arguments for 'agent'`.
- The same wrapper rule applies when bypassing `--current-user`: write a tiny `/tmp/*.sh` on the guest and execute `/bin/bash /tmp/*.sh` through the sudo desktop-user environment. Do not pass `openclaw agent --message '...'` directly as one raw `prlctl exec` command.
- When ref-mode onboarding stores `OPENAI_API_KEY` as an env secret ref, the post-onboard agent verification should also export `OPENAI_API_KEY` for the guest command. The gateway can still reject with pairing-required and fall back to embedded execution, and that fallback needs the env-backed credential available in the shell.
- On the fresh Tahoe snapshot, `brew` exists but `n
Tool defaults are unsafe or overly permissive (e.g. disabled TLS verification, no authentication, world-writable permissions). Unsafe defaults widen the attack surface.
- When ref-mode onboarding stores `OPENAI_API_KEY` as an env secret ref, the post-onboard agent verification should also export `OPENAI_API_KEY` for the guest command. The gateway can still reject with pairing-required and fall back to embedded execution, and that fallback needs the env-backed credential available in the shell.
- On the fresh Tahoe snapshot, `brew` exists but `node` may be missing from PATH in noninteractive exec. Use `/opt/homebrew/bin/node` when needed.
- Fresh host-served tgz installs should install as guest root with `HOME=/var/root`, then run onboarding as the desktop user via `prlctl exec --current-user`.
- Root-installed tgz smoke can log plugin blocks for world-writable `extensions/*`; do not treat that as an onboarding or gateway failure unless plugin loading is the task.
## Windows flow
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
- Use plain `prlctl exec`; `--current-user` is not the right transport on this snapshot.
- Fresh snapshots may be missing `curl`, and `apt-get update` can fail on clock skew. Bootstrap with `apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Date=false update` and install `curl ca-certificates`.
- Fresh `main` tgz smoke still needs the latest-release installer first because the snapshot has no Node or npm before bootstrap.
- This snapshot does not have a usable `systemd --user` session; managed daemon install is unsupported.
- The Linux smoke now falls back to a manual `setsid openclaw gateway run --bind loopback --port 18789 --force` launch with `HOME=/root` and the provider secret exported, then verifies `gateway status --deep --require-rpc` when available.
- The Linux manual gateway launch should wait for `gateway status --deep --require-rpc` inside the `gateway-start` phase; otherwise the first status probe can race the background bind and fail a healthy lane.
- If Linux gateway bring-up fails, inspect `/t
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
- Fresh snapshots may be missing `curl`, and `apt-get update` can fail on clock skew. Bootstrap with `apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Date=false update` and install `curl ca-certificates`.
- Fresh `main` tgz smoke still needs the latest-release installer first because the snapshot has no Node or npm before bootstrap.
- This snapshot does not have a usable `systemd --user` session; managed daemon install is unsupported.
- The Linux smoke now falls back to a manual `setsid openclaw gateway run --bind loopback --port 18789 --force` launch with `HOME=/root` and the provider secret exported, then verifies `gateway status --deep --require-rpc` when available.
- The Linux manual gateway launch should wait for `gateway status --deep --require-rpc` inside the `gateway-start` phase; otherwise the first status probe can race the background bind and fail a healthy lane.
- If Linux gateway bring-up fails, inspect `/tmp/openclaw-parallels-linux-gateway.log` in the guest phase logs first; the common failur