How to Audit ClawHub Skills for Malware
ClawHub skills run with significant access to your system, environment variables, and data. Unlike traditional app stores, ClawHub has no built-in malware scanning, making manual security audits essential. This guide teaches you how to identify suspicious patterns, verify skill provenance, and safely remove potentially malicious skills before they compromise your OpenClaw instance.
Why This Is Hard to Do Yourself
These are the common pitfalls that trip people up.
No built-in scanning
ClawHub has no malware scanner. You must manually review every skill's source code.
Hidden data exfiltration
Malicious skills can encode and send your data to external servers using base64, DNS tunneling, or steganography.
Credential harvesting
Skills can read environment variables, config files, and API keys, then silently transmit them.
Obfuscated code
Skills may use minified code, dynamic imports, or eval() to hide malicious behavior.
Step-by-Step Guide
List all installed skills
ls -la ~/.openclaw/skills/
# Or check the ClawHub UI for installed skillsRead each skill's manifest
Check skill.md for declared permissions.
cat ~/.openclaw/skills/example-skill/skill.md
# Look for: shell access, network access, file system accessSearch for suspicious patterns
# Search for outbound network calls
grep -rn 'fetch\|axios\|http\|XMLHttpRequest' ~/.openclaw/skills/
# Search for environment variable access
grep -rn 'process.env\|import.meta.env' ~/.openclaw/skills/
# Search for eval and dynamic code execution
grep -rn 'eval\|Function(' ~/.openclaw/skills/Warning: Absence of these patterns doesn't guarantee safety. Sophisticated malware uses indirect methods like dynamic imports or encoded payloads.
Check for excessive permissions
Review what each skill actually needs vs. what it requests.
Verify skill provenance
Check the skill's ClawHub page, author reputation, and recent commit history.
# Check the skill's GitHub repo or ClawHub listing
# Look for: verified author badge, download count, recent activityDisable or remove suspicious skills
# Remove a skill
rm -rf ~/.openclaw/skills/suspicious-skill/
# Or disable without removing
mv ~/.openclaw/skills/suspicious-skill ~/.openclaw/skills/.disabled-suspicious-skillDon't Trust Your Own Audit?
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