Malicious OpenClaw AI Coding Assistant Extension on VS Code Marketplace
Updated: 14.03.2026 18:17
· First: 28.01.2026 19:46
· 📰 8 src / 17 articles
A malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension named "ClawdBot Agent - AI Coding Assistant" was discovered on the official Extension Marketplace. The extension, which posed as a free AI coding assistant, stealthily dropped a malicious payload on compromised hosts. The extension was taken down by Microsoft after being reported by cybersecurity researchers. The malicious extension executed a binary named "Code.exe" that deployed a legitimate remote desktop program, granting attackers persistent remote access to compromised hosts. The extension also incorporated multiple fallback mechanisms to ensure payload delivery, including retrieving a DLL from Dropbox and using hard-coded URLs to obtain the payloads. Additionally, security researchers found hundreds of unauthenticated Moltbot instances online, exposing sensitive data and credentials. Moltbot, an open-source personal AI assistant, can run 24/7 locally, maintaining a persistent memory and executing scheduled tasks. However, insecure deployments can lead to sensitive data leaks, corporate data exposure, credential theft, and command execution. Hundreds of Clawdbot Control admin interfaces are exposed online due to reverse proxy misconfiguration, allowing unauthenticated access and root-level system access. More than 230 malicious packages for OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot and ClawdBot) have been published in less than a week on the tool's official registry and on GitHub. These malicious skills impersonate legitimate utilities and inject information-stealing malware payloads onto users' systems, targeting sensitive data like API keys, wallet private keys, SSH credentials, and browser passwords. Users are advised to audit their configurations, revoke connected service integrations, and implement network controls to mitigate potential risks. A self-styled social networking platform built for AI agents, Moltbook, contained a misconfigured database that allowed full read and write access to all data. The exposure was due to a Supabase API key exposed in client-side JavaScript, granting unauthenticated access to the entire production database. Researchers accessed 1.5 million API authentication tokens, 30,000 email addresses, and thousands of private messages between agents. The API key exposure allowed attackers to impersonate any agent on the platform, post content, send messages, and interact as that agent. Unauthenticated users could edit existing posts, inject malicious content or prompt injection payloads, and deface the site. SecurityScorecard found 40,214 exposed OpenClaw instances associated with 28,663 unique IP addresses. 63% of observed deployments are vulnerable, with 12,812 instances exploitable via remote code execution (RCE) attacks. SecurityScorecard correlated 549 instances with prior breach activity and 1493 with known vulnerabilities. Three high-severity CVEs in OpenClaw have been discovered, with public exploit code available. OpenClaw instances are at risk of indirect prompt injection and API key leaks, with most exposures located in China, the US, and Singapore. A supply chain attack via the Cline npm package version 2.3.0 installed OpenClaw on users' systems, exploiting a prompt injection vulnerability in Cline's Claude Issue Triage workflow. The compromised Cline package was downloaded approximately 4,000 times over an eight-hour stretch. OpenClaw has broad permissions and full disk access, making it a high-value implant for attackers. Cline released version 2.4.0 to address the issue and revoked the compromised token. The attack affected all users who installed the Cline CLI package version 2.3.0 during an eight-hour window on February 17, 2026. The attack did not impact Cline's Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension and JetBrains plugin. Cline maintainers released version 2.4.0 to mitigate the unauthorized publication and revoked the compromised token. Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed a small but noticeable uptick in OpenClaw installations on February 17, 2026, due to the supply chain compromise. Users are advised to update to the latest version, check their environment for any unexpected installation of OpenClaw, and remove it if not required. China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) has issued a warning about the security risks stemming from the use of OpenClaw, an open-source and self-hosted autonomous AI agent. OpenClaw's inherently weak default security configurations and privileged access to the system could be exploited by bad actors to seize control of the endpoint. Prompt injections in OpenClaw can cause the agent to leak sensitive information if tricked into accessing and consuming malicious content. Indirect prompt injection (IDPI) or cross-domain prompt injection (XPIA) attacks can manipulate benign AI features like web page summarization or content analysis to run manipulated instructions. Researchers at PromptArmor found that the link preview feature in messaging apps like Telegram or Discord can be turned into a data exfiltration pathway when communicating with OpenClaw. OpenClaw may inadvertently and irrevocably delete critical information due to its misinterpretation of user instructions. Threat actors can upload malicious skills to repositories like ClawHub that, when installed, run arbitrary commands or deploy malware. Attackers can exploit recently disclosed security vulnerabilities in OpenClaw to compromise the system and leak sensitive data. Chinese authorities have moved to restrict state-run enterprises and government agencies from running OpenClaw AI apps on office computers. Threat actors have distributed malicious GitHub repositories posing as OpenClaw installers to deploy information stealers like Atomic and Vidar Stealer, and a Golang-based proxy malware known as GhostSocks.