OpenClaw before 2026.4.8 contains a privilege escalation vulnerability in the gateway plugin HTTP authentication mechanism that escalates identity-bearing operator.read requests to runtime operator.write permissions. Attackers can exploit this by sending read-scoped requests through the gateway auth route to gain unauthorized write access to runtime operations.

OpenClaw: Gateway plugin HTTP `auth: gateway` widens identity-bearing `operator.read` requests into runtime `operator.write`