CVE-2026-22176: OpenClaw has a Command Injection via unescaped environment assignments in Windows Scheduled Task script generation

Summary

A command injection vulnerability existed in Windows Scheduled Task script generation for OpenClaw. Environment values were written into gateway.cmd using unquoted set KEY=VALUE, which allowed Windows shell metacharacters in config-provided environment variables to break out of assignment context.

Affected Packages / Versions

• Package: openclaw (npm)
• Affected versions: <= 2026.2.17
• Patched version: >= 2026.2.19
• Latest published vulnerable version at review time (2026-02-19): 2026.2.17

Practical Risk Context

For a single-user, localhost-only setup on a personally controlled machine, practical risk is typically low.

This issue becomes materially relevant when configuration or environment values are sourced from less-trusted inputs, for example:

• shared/team config templates,
• copied config snippets,
• setup scripts, automation, or repos that write config,
• any workflow where another party can influence env values before gateway install/reinstall.

In those scenarios, it provides a reliable config-to-command-execution path when the scheduled task script is generated and run.

Details

On Windows, gateway service installation writes a helper batch script and then registers it via Scheduled Task (schtasks). Before the fix, env lines were rendered as set KEY=VALUE in src/daemon/schtasks.ts, so values containing metacharacters (for example &, |, ^, %, !) could alter command behavior in cmd.exe.

The fix now renders quoted assignments (set "KEY=VALUE") with explicit escaping for cmd metacharacters, updates parser compatibility for quoted assignments, and adds regression tests for metacharacter handling and round-trip parsing.

Fix Commit(s)

• dafe52e8cf1a041d898cfb304a485fa05e5f58fb

OpenClaw thanks @tdjackey for reporting.