OpenClaw, previously known as Clawdbot and briefly as Moltbot, is a free, open‑source personal AI agent that runs locally on your computer, enabling you to automate any task a human can perform on a computer. It gained rapid popularity, accumulating 100,000 GitHub stars in record time, along with tens of thousands of forks as it went viral. OpenClaw skills pose severe security risks because they are unvetted modules that may contain hidden, malicious instructions for the agent's model. These harmful instructions could result in API key leaks, data theft, credential compromise, and system breaches due to malicious code execution. This guide covers OpenClaw skill structure, known security incidents, and step-by-step instructions for scanning agent skills with the Cisco AI Skill Scanner. The Cisco AI Skill Scanner provides comprehensive security analysis of OpenClaw agent skills before installation, detecting malware, data exfiltration, and prompt-injection vulnerabilities.
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