From GitHub star to security nightmare: What OpenClaw AI means for enterprise SaaS data

Until recently, the only claws prone to causing headaches were the white ones. But as OpenClaw AI burst onto the scene with an "agents-only" social network Moltbook, it offers a glimpse of a near future one where agentic AI bypasses traditional security controls. In this post, we'll separate real risks from hype and explain where and how Nudge Security can help protect your enterprise data in this new reality.

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In late January 2026, OpenClaw AI surpassed 100,000 GitHub stars in just 72 hours—making it the fastest repo rise to fame in GitHub history. At the time of writing, the repo had earned over 163,000 stars. But the real catalyst came from Moltbook, an experimental social network where AI agents—not humans—post, comment, and interact in a Reddit-style format. As observers watched agents share information, debug the platform, and even plot to overtake the human race, OpenClaw made headlines.

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Then came the wake-up call. Cloud security firm Wiz discovered a misconfigured database exposing 1.5 million API authentication tokens, 35,000 email addresses, and private messages between agents. Researchers uncovered remote code execution vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to hijack OpenClaw agents with a single malicious link. Koi Security reported over 300 malicious user-submitted skills containing malware designed to steal sensitive data.

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Some point to Moltbook as evidence of an impending future where autonomous agents conspire against humans, others see OpenClaw as a hastily built project with serious security flaws.

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The more immediate concern for security leaders? How does a CISO manage the risks of OpenClaw AI use within the workplace—right now?

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What you need to know about OpenClaw AI

According to its website, OpenClaw AI (née OpenClawd, Moltbot, Clawdbot) is an open agent platform that runs on your machine and works from the chat apps you already use—WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Teams. Wherever you are, your AI assistant follows.

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Some call it the promise Siri never delivered. The idea is enticing: a highly trainable AI executive assistant that works across all your tools and devices while offering more privacy than hosted or SaaS-delivered agents.

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The catch? You need to give it full access to all of your tools, devices, and data.

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OpenClaw is not exactly easy to use (yet)

Getting started with OpenClaw requires technical aptitude, creating a barrier to entry for the masses. Unlike other AI agent platforms created within hosted AI or SaaS environments—Agentforce, Microsoft Copilot, Meta's Manus—OpenClaw doesn't offer a simple "sign up and go" experience.

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This may be a small saving grace for CISOs concerned about enterprise-wide adoption. Instead, security leaders can focus their efforts on the subset of the workforce that can spell CLI.

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As open source software, OpenClaw runs locally on your laptop or virtually in a free, hosted cloud environment. It offers lightweight companion apps for MacOS and Linux, with Windows, iOS, Android, and other platforms on the way.

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OpenClaw is not an AI model or agent itself. Instead, it acts as a gateway that connects and orchestrates tasks across AI tools like Claude or OpenAI, popular apps like Github and Notion, messaging services like Telegram and Slack, and device tools like your laptop camera and microphone.

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OpenClaw asks for highly privileged access

The idea of an AI executive assistant that coordinates your social calendar by chatting with your friends’ AI assistants, briefs you on your upcoming workday over Discord, and scribes Slack responses through voice command has obvious appeal.

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But this requires access to your devices, apps, and data.

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In OpenClaw setup examples, we've seen it often defaults to highly privileged access to apps like Google Calendar and 1Password. Given the non-deterministic nature of agentic AI, this is like handing your 10-year-old the car keys, your phone, and your credit card—then asking them to run errands.

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The access-versus-privacy paradox isn't new to security and data protection leaders. However, modern SaaS and AI providers make it increasingly easier for individual employees to grant highly permissive access on their own, taking on unmanaged risk on behalf of the organization.

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We're seeing a largely unmitigated trend: employees delegating their own app and data entitlements to untrusted or shadow AI agents.

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This might not be a top CISO concern if employees neatly separated their personal and professional digital lives, or if organizations had a finite estate of locked-down SaaS apps.

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But that's not our reality.

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The bottom line

The explosive demand for OpenClaw signals that we are barreling toward a future where AI executive assistants work across every facet of our digital lives—personal and professional—requiring more privileged access to corporate apps, data, and devices.

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In this sprawling AI ecosystem, it becomes increasingly challenging for security leaders to maintain oversight and control of corporate data shared with shadow AI agents through AI-to-SaaS integrations.

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So what can security teams actually do about this?

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How Nudge Security helps you discover and manage AI-to-SaaS data access risks

While AI agents and assistants are beginning to break the conventional security mold with unconventional identity and access methods—connecting your Telegram account to OpenClaw, having multi-modal conversations over voice and SMS—SaaS providers are not.

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This is especially for those that focus on prosumer and enterprise markets.

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Real-time visibility into AI-to-SaaS connections

As soon as an employee wants their AI assistant to interact with corporate SaaS data, they create an OAuth grant, API key, or webhook—most often sending the employee to a web browser.

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These behaviors are highly observable in Nudge Security with our browser extension and connected apps (direct API integrations with SaaS providers).

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For instance, when an employee grants an AI agent access to Google Workspace via OAuth, Nudge Security flags the integration, analyzes the permission scope, and alerts your team if the access is risky or overly permissive.

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Nudge Security provides a critical layer of security visibility above and beyond network and endpoint security controls. We map AI-to-SaaS relationships, generate insights and security findings on risky integrations, and alert security teams to concerning employee behaviors.

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Understanding AI tool interactions through MCP monitoring

With our remote MCP connection monitoring, security teams can understand how third-party AI tools and agents interact with corporate data in SaaS environments.

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This visibility is essential in an environment where employees increasingly experiment with custom workflows and AI-powered assistants—making access decisions more frequent, more decentralized, and harder to audit after the fact.

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Automated AI governance at scale

Nudge Security provides the tools security teams need to manage this sprawling data governance challenge at scale:

• Direct revocation of risky OAuth grants
• Just-in-time guardrails that guide the workforce to make safe, compliant decisions about their AI use
• Continuous monitoring of non-human identities created through OAuth grants and API keys, the permissions they inherit, and the conditions under which access is granted

Why traditional controls aren't enough

While the fate of the world's first agents-only social network is unknown, it's clear that today's real AI governance challenge is largely a SaaS security challenge.

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Given its high technical barrier to entry and high risk potential, OpenClaw in its current form is unlikely to overtake the larger trend of AI agents and assistants being created and managed within existing SaaS and AI ecosystems.

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Traditional perimeter-based controls can't keep pace in this environment. What matters most is visibility into the non-human identities created through OAuth grants and API keys, the permissions they inherit, and the conditions under which access is granted.

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The question facing security and IT teams is not simply whether employees are using risky AI tools, but how those tools and assistants are accessing sensitive data across an ever-growing SaaS and AI ecosystem. The question isn't whether agentic AI will transform work—it's whether your security posture will keep pace.