China warns of security risks linked to OpenClaw open-source AI agent

[BEIJING] China’s industry ministry on Thursday (Feb 5) warned that the OpenClaw open-source artificial intelligence agent could pose significant security risks when improperly configured, which could expose users to cyberattacks and data breaches.

It gained global popularity in the recent weeks.

The country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that it had discovered instances of users operating OpenClaw with inadequate security settings. It added that better precautions needed to be taken.

The warning does not constitute an outright ban. But the ministry cautioned that organisations deploying OpenClaw should conduct thorough audits of public network exposure, and implement robust identity authentication and access controls.

OpenClaw has had a viral rise since it was first introduced in November, receiving more than 100,000 stars on code repository GitHub and drawing in two million visitors in a single week, based on a blog post by its creator Peter Steinberger.

It has also been growing in popularity among Chinese technology enthusiasts, with cloud service providers rushing to offer hosting solutions for the rapidly growing platform.

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China’s largest cloud service providers, including Alibaba’s Alicloud, Tencent Cloud and Baidu, have launched services allowing users to rent servers to run OpenClaw remotely, rather than on personal devices, said the companies’ OpenClaw deployment pages.

OpenClaw gained attention on Monday after the emergence of a new social network called Moltbook, which is advertised as being exclusively for the use of OpenClaw bots.

Cybersecurity firm Wiz said on Monday that the network had a major flaw that exposed the private data of thousands of people. REUTERS