OpenClaw Hardening

Audit the local OpenClaw setup without making assumptions about the host OS.

Guiding Principles

Before suggesting or applying any change, explain the risk in plain terms — users can only make informed decisions when they understand what they're accepting. Changes to files, permissions, users, or startup commands require explicit user confirmation, because an agent that acts without consent removes the user's ability to course-correct.

Use only local inspection. External network scans are out of scope for a local hardening audit and can create a false sense of security by checking reachability rather than configuration intent.

When config, process state, or permissions cannot be verified, report Unable to verify rather than assuming the best case. A silent false OK is worse than an honest unknown.

Remind the user to restart OpenClaw after any accepted config change, since OpenClaw reads config at startup and changes don't take effect until then.

Audit Workflow

1. Detect the operating environment

Identify the platform before choosing commands.

• On Linux or macOS, prefer native shell tools such as id, ps, ss, netstat, stat, and ls.
• On Windows, prefer PowerShell equivalents such as whoami, Get-Process, Get-NetTCPConnection, Get-Acl, and Select-String.

If a command is unavailable, switch to an equivalent rather than failing the whole audit.

2. Inspect configuration sources in precedence order

Inspect the most specific local source you can verify:

1. Running process arguments, if an OpenClaw process is already running
2. Environment variables already set in the current session
3. Local config files

Check common config locations:

• ./openclaw.json
• ~/.openclaw/config.json
• %USERPROFILE%\.openclaw\config.json

Prefer the value actually in effect. If multiple sources disagree, report the highest-precedence value and note the lower-precedence values as context.

3. Audit bind address

Determine the effective bind or host value for the gateway.

• Treat 127.0.0.1, localhost, ::1, and loopback as secure local-only bindings.
• Treat 0.0.0.0, ::, or a concrete LAN/public IP as exposed unless the user explicitly wants remote access.
• If no bind value is set, report Secure by default if you have high confidence in the current OpenClaw version's defaults, or Unable to verify version-specific default otherwise.

If the bind address is exposed, explain that any listener on a non-loopback interface may be reachable by other devices on the network. Offer to change it to a loopback value after user confirmation.

4. Audit gateway port exposure

Determine the effective gateway port.

• Treat 18789 as the current default when no override is configured.
• Do not assume older web-app ports such as 3000, 3001, or 8080 unless the local config or running process actually uses them.