OpenClaw creator here.

This was a privilege-escalation bug, but not "any random Telegram/Discord message can instantly own every OpenClaw instance."

The root issue was an incomplete fix. The earlier advisory hardened the gateway RPC path for device approvals by passing the caller's scopes into the core approval check. But the `/pair approve` plugin command path still called the same approval function without `callerScopes`, and the core logic failed open when that parameter was missing.

So the strongest confirmed exploit path was: a client that ALREADY HAD GATEWAY ACCESS and enough permission to send commands could use `chat.send` with `/pair approve latest` to approve a pending device request asking for broader scopes, including `operator.admin`. In other words: a scope-ceiling bypass from pairing/write-level access to admin.

This was not primarily a Telegram-specific or message-provider-specific bug. The bug lived in the shared plugin command handler, so any already-authorized command sender that could reach `/pair approve` could hit it. For Telegram specifically, the default DM policy blocks unknown outsiders before command execution, so this was not "message the bot once and get admin." But an already-authorized Telegram sender could still reach the vulnerable path.

The practical risk for this was very low, especially if OpenClaw is used as single-user personal assistant. We're working hard to harden the codebase with folks from Nvidia, ByteDance, Tencent and OpenAI.