OpenClaw 2.0 pours glitter on slow-burning security dumpster fire

OpenClaw has unveiled what its makers call its largest ever update – large enough to earn a 2.0 moniker – with usability taking center stage, along with some security updates that critics are suggesting will be insufficient. The OpenClaw foundation announced the release of version 2.0 of its AI agent harness on Sunday, …

[BoHu]

Exhilarating

I for one welcome mat our new AI overlords with open claws and push-up girdle! Thanks heaven for that easier 2.0 installation process that is a right godsend for all sacrificial lambs the world over. Come right in, make yourself at home, mi computadora es tu computadora, hasta la pasta! Slippers, tea, swmbo? Anything! Your skillful artificial agentic wish is my command to surrender-monkey to and obey, oh master of disaster. Let me be the Roomba to your every vacuuming needs ...

Long live the impermanence anxiety of YOLO tossers who bring us such indispensably outstanding Ralph Wiggum looparoonis, and related chihuahuas, imho. We just don't have enough troubles the way it is ATM, water-use restrictions and all, sooo boooring, bring it on! ;( _</nausea>

[midnitet0ker]

Are you going to eat that?

I'm wondering when litigation starts flying due to the consequences of agentic fux0ry unleashed by rogue models. I would have thought that bending over a barrel and legally gaping your whale eye goatse-style by letting AI execute arbitrary actions for which you assume legal liability would be a turn-off, yet here we are.

[Tron]

Re: Are you going to eat that?

This may be the biggest 'Lemmings: This way to the cliff' sign we've had for a while in tech. Buy popcorn and await the inevitable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hannah Fry

I think it’s a bit misogynistic to be saying “Celebrity UK mathematician Professor Hannah Fry” to describe someone who is a mathematician, author and broadcaster. She is the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

You wouldn’t call Brian Cox a ‘Celebrity Astronomer’ or Sir David Spiegelhalter a ‘Celebrity Statistician’.

Questionable journalistic tone …. and please resit your Mando training.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hannah Fry

I have absolutely seen Brian Cox described as "pop star astronomer" "celebrity astronomer" plus several other variations on that in the various tabloids and on TV.

See also Brian May, the Doctor of Astrophysics who happens to have been a guitarist in a somewhat successful band.

I don't necessarily believe referring to people's multiple achievements diminishes them, rather it promotes them

[wolfetone]

Re: Hannah Fry

To be fair, Brian May was a guitarist of a rock band before he became a doctor. To me, he's a musician who happens to be a doctor. I know to a lot of people in astrology astronomy that he's a doctor first.

But to the great unwashed, everyone knows Hannah Fry from being on the TV. The fact she is a mathematician is secondary to many people outside of her circle of work.

See also Suzannah Lipscomb. Everyone knows her from the TV as the lady with the affected voice who showed us all how the 1950's house would kill you by inventing a kettle that would pop it's own electric cable out when it was boiled, often falling in to the kitchen sink full of water that the lady of the house was washing the dishes in. She's been on (I think) Celebrity Juice (or one of those throwaway TV shows). But if you're in to history, she is obviously a historian first, TV person second.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Hannah Fry

I mean, Brian May was a student who deferred his studies and became a rock star, Brian Cox was a student before he became a pop star, neither, in my opinion at least, are less for having multiple, enviable achievements and I believe they should all be celebrated.

Plus, I'm all for "celebrity scientists" if it helps the pursuit of knowledge and promotes scientific endeavours to a wider audience.

[Irongut]

Re: Hannah Fry

> See also Suzannah Lipscomb. Everyone knows her from the TV

WHO?

[AndersH]

Re: Hannah Fry

Have you seen a pattern of misogyny like this from The Register, or the author? For example, a tendency to declare women as celebrities and men as something more?

To me, this wording feels in line with this publication's writing style. Professor Hannah Fry is a famous and celebrated mathematician in the UK.

[Irongut]

Re: Hannah Fry

Never heard of David Spiegelhalter or Hannah Fry but I would most definitely call Brian Cox a celebrity astronomer. With small letters too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hannah Fry

Ok how about Prof John Curtis then ??

Celebrity Canvasser ?

[BartyFartsLast]

There's going to be an awful lot of corporate lawyers salivating and tumescent whilst they browse the yacht broker websites with the amount of work they'll be billing for.

Almost as many as the number who'll be in coronary care ICU after they've realised what their corporate clients have done now.

Still, at least they've got legal AI to help with the cases.

[steelpillow]

Looking forward to v2.1, then

So, this agent framework thing is moving at pace. Open Sourcerers throw stuff up and gather feedback for the next sprint. Claw 2.0 is not a Thing-end-of, it is a capability point whose next sprint will be to lock the thing down now that we know what we have to lock down. And that will be made easier for the secure-by-design folks to do now, just as it is easier for the with-great-power-comes-great-BWAHAHA! slingers. It's the world speeding up like it keeps on doing. Blaming an entire irresponsibility scandal on one version bump is just media clickbait FUD.

[rgjnk]

The modern AI age

Yet another barely functional, under engineered piece of crap thrown together without much clue that becomes widely used for 'reasons'.

Given the non-existent moat it has you'd think someone would have displaced it by now with an alternative with a slightly better UI, a slightly smaller footprint, a slightly easier setup up, and a little more security?

After all it's just vibe coded shite and a brand and that's trivial to knock up.

[Irongut]

Re: The modern AI age

It doesn't even have much of a brand. It changed name six times and is known as a major security risk.

[elsergiovolador]

For

The website still does not explain what OpenClaw is for.

"Organizes your inbox, sends emails, manages your calendar, checks you in for flights."

Is quite vague. How it organises it? What emails it sends and to whom? What it does with the calendar? Will it fly me somewhere? Am I a pilot?

[werdsmith]

Re: For

It sends the emails that are required to do whatever it’s doing and also some that aren’t required.

It might organise your inbox by categorising emails by content and putting them into folders. Or by sender.

Depends what you ask it to do, but the difference is that you can ask it in plain language, you don’t have to do any scripting, scheduling, triggering (although OpenClaw can do all that for you if you ask it to).

Pardon my Genie but was a simple comedy in the 1970s that was on the premise of a genie granting wishes but taking the ambiguous wish command absolutely literally with arguably comedic results.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: For

That tells me absolutely nothing.

[werdsmith]

Re: For

<shrug>

Whatever

[elsergiovolador]

Re: For

Said even less.

[werdsmith]

Re: For

That was intentional. The way to deal with someone being deliberately obtuse.

[Irongut]

A rebuilt installation experience

Is this the developer equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

Certainly it would be low on my list of priorities if I were working on or using something with the security track record of Warelay / Clawd / Clawdis / Clawdbot / Moltbot / OpenClaw or whatever stupid name they are using this month.

[MazeFrame]

Security Disaster 2.0

Popcorn at the ready, can't wait for the tech enthusiasts, touchsceen lovers and gadget fiddlers to find out why the experienced tech-wizards mumble into their neckbeards about security all the time.

[ecofeco]

I prefer my interface with a toothbrush

We've reach peak AI slop

Dyson launches $499 toothbrush with built-in camera, AI technology

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/dyson-launches-499-toothbrush-built-in-camera-ai-technology

[BoHu]

Re: I prefer my interface with a toothbrush

Good point! AI toothbrushes and Kohler toilets are definitely earth-shakingly up and trending these days (January), with major bug fixes over their 2005 editions and 2001 releases, iiuc. Just need a little healthy reboot every now and then it seems, and violà ...

Get the price down a tiny bit (eg. 100x) and the dream of a million-unit commode DDoS botnet of openclawed agentic bathroom kit might finally be within reach, at long last. What a relief that'll be! ;)

[weladenwow]

A Little Boy Cried ... openClaw!

Agent security has to be deployed at installation and thereafter constantly reviewed.

Agent security has to be built into the entire system and reviewed systematically : least privilege, network isolation, confirmation of critical operations, end-to-end monitoring, and immediate suspension and disconnection the moment an anomaly is detected.

It is not enough to be The Littl e Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!' , which is all this article manages to achieve.

Point potential users to solutions.

Read the Fine Manuals at openClaw and elsewhere.

This applies to open AI harnesses , and to all agentic frameworks, and not just openClaw.

[weladenwow]

Please don't just cry 'Wolf's.

Agent security has to be deployed at installation and thereafter constantly reviewed.

Agent security has to be built into the entire system and reviewed systematically : least privilege, network isolation, confirmation of critical operations, end-to-end monitoring, and immediate suspension and disconnection the moment an anomaly is detected.

It is not enough to be The Littl e Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!' , which is all this article manages to achieve.

Point potential users to solutions.

Read the Fine Manuals at openClaw and elsewhere.

This applies to to all agentic frameworks, and not just openClaw.