CVE-2026-27486 OpenClaw: Process Safety - Unvalidated PID Kill via SIGKILL in Process Cleanup

Medium 4.3 Published 21 Feb 2026 Updated 24 Feb 2026

Attackers on shared hosts can terminate unrelated processes via pattern matching in OpenClaw CLI cleanup, causing denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2026-27486?

CVE-2026-27486 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Openclaw Openclaw, published on 21 Feb 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant. In versions 2026.2.13 and below of the OpenClaw CLI, the process cleanup uses system-wide process enumeration and pattern matching to terminate processes without verifying if they are owned by the current OpenClaw process. On shared hosts, unrelated processes can be terminated if they match the pattern. The CLI runner cleanup helpers can kill processes matched by command-line patterns without validating process ownership. This issue has been fixed in version 2026.2.14.

Weakness: CWE-283

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-27486?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including openclaw. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`openclaw` npm	All versions	`2026.2.14`
`openclaw` npm	All versions	`2026.2.14`

Products include Openclaw Openclaw.

How do I fix CVE-2026-27486?

Upgrade openclaw to 2026.2.14 or later.

Is CVE-2026-27486 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-27486 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Openclaw Openclaw vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-jfv4-h8mc-jcp8.