Vext Shield

AI-native security suite for OpenClaw. Scans skills for prompt injection, data exfiltration, cognitive rootkits, semantic worms, and more. Includes static an...

AI-native security for the agentic era. Detects threats that VirusTotal and traditional scanners cannot: prompt injection, semantic worms, cognitive rootkits, data exfiltration, permission boundary violations, and behavioral attacks.

Skills Included

This suite includes 6 security skills:

vext-scan — Static Analysis Scanner

Scans all installed skills for 227+ threat patterns using regex matching, Python AST analysis, and encoded content detection (base64, ROT13, unicode homoglyphs).

• "Scan my skills"
• "Scan the weather-lookup skill"

vext-audit — Installation Audit

Audits your OpenClaw installation for security misconfigurations: sandbox settings, API key storage, file permissions, network exposure, and SOUL.md integrity.

• "Audit my openclaw"

vext-redteam — Adversarial Testing

Runs 6 adversarial test batteries against any skill: prompt injection (24 payloads), data boundary, persistence, exfiltration, escalation, and worm behavior.

• "Red team the weather-lookup skill"
• "Red team my custom skill at /path/to/skill"

vext-monitor — Runtime Monitor

Watches for suspicious activity: file integrity changes, sensitive file access, outbound network connections, and suspicious processes.

• "Monitor my skills"

vext-firewall — Policy Firewall

Defines per-skill network and file access policies with default-deny allowlists.

• "Allow weather-lookup to access api.open-meteo.com"
• "Show firewall rules"

vext-dashboard — Security Dashboard

Aggregates data from all VEXT Shield components into a single security posture report.

• "Security dashboard"

Running Individual Skills

python3 skills/vext-scan/scan.py --all
python3 skills/vext-audit/audit.py
python3 skills/vext-redteam/redteam.py --skill-dir /path/to/skill
python3 skills/vext-monitor/monitor.py
python3 skills/vext-firewall/firewall.py list
python3 skills/vext-dashboard/dashboard.py

Rules

• Target skill files are never modified — sandbox executes against a temporary copy
• Report all findings honestly without minimizing severity
• VEXT Shield itself makes zero network requests
• Save all reports locally to ~/.openclaw/vext-shield/reports/
• Treat every skill as potentially hostile during scanning

Safety & Sandbox Isolation

VEXT Shield requires OS-level sandbox isolation to execute untrusted code. If kernel-level sandboxing is not available, execution is refused — there is no unsafe fallback.

Sandbox enforcement:

Platform	Network	Filesystem	Method
macOS	Blocked at kernel	Write-restricted to temp only	sandbox-exec deny-network profile
Linux	Blocked at kernel	Write-restricted to temp only	unshare --net network namespace
Other	Execution refused	Execution refused	No fallback — will not run untrusted code

All executions include:

• Target executed in a temporary copy (original skill directory is never modified)
• HOME overridden to temp directory (prevents writes to ~/.openclaw, ~/.ssh, etc.)
• Sensitive env vars stripped (API keys, tokens, AWS/SSH/GitHub credentials)
• PATH restricted to system directories only
• 30-second timeout with process kill
• Post-execution file snapshot diffing to detect any changes

No bypass options exist. There is no --skip-sandbox flag, no --no-sandbox flag, no require_full_isolation parameter, and no weaker fallback mode in the codebase. The SandboxRunner class accepts only timeout_seconds — isolation is unconditional. If OS-level sandboxing is unavailable, execution raises an error. Sandbox behavioral tests always run with OS-level enforcement.

VEXT Shield itself:

• Makes zero network requests — all analysis is local
• Zero external dependencies — Python 3.10+ stdlib only
• Reports saved locally to ~/.openclaw/vext-shield/reports/

Built by Vext Labs.