OpenClaw 2026.2.12: Security Hardening & Reliability

Release Date: February 13, 2026

This release focuses on what matters most: making OpenClaw more secure and reliable. No flashy features—just the kind of improvements that let you sleep better at night.

Security Hardening

We've closed several attack vectors that could affect self-hosted deployments:

SSRF Protection

URL-based file and image inputs now have explicit deny policies and hostname allowlists. Configure files.urlAllowlist and images.urlAllowlist to control which external URLs your agent can fetch. Blocked fetches are now audit-logged.

Browser Control Authentication

The browser control HTTP routes now require authentication by default. If you start browser control without auth configured, OpenClaw auto-generates a gateway.auth.token. This prevents unauthorized access to your browser automation.

Webhook Session Routing

POST /hooks/agent no longer accepts sessionKey overrides by default. If you need fixed hook contexts, set hooks.defaultSessionKey with hooks.allowedSessionKeyPrefixes. This prevents external webhooks from routing messages to arbitrary sessions.

Skills Sync Sandboxing

Mirrored skill sync destinations are now confined to the sandbox skills/ root. Skill names from frontmatter can no longer be used to write to arbitrary filesystem paths.

Reliability Improvements

Cron Jobs Finally Work™

We fixed six separate cron scheduler bugs:

• Jobs no longer skip when nextRunAtMs advances
• Timers re-arm correctly when jobs are still executing
• No more duplicate fires when multiple jobs trigger simultaneously
• Scheduler errors are isolated—one bad job won't break others
• One-shot at jobs don't re-fire after restart
• Heartbeat scheduler won't stall on unexpected errors

If you've had flaky scheduled jobs, this release should fix it.

Graceful Restarts

The gateway now drains active turns before restarting. No more lost messages during updates or config changes.

Large Image Support

WebSocket payload limits raised so 5MB image attachments work reliably. Send those high-res screenshots without truncation.

Channel Improvements

Telegram

• Blockquotes now render as native <blockquote> tags
• REACTION_INVALID errors surface as warnings instead of crashes

WhatsApp

• Markdown bold (**text**) and strikethrough (~~text~~) convert to WhatsApp formatting
• Media-only sends work correctly
• Voice messages get proper MIME types

Quality of Life

Local Time Logs

openclaw logs --local-time

Finally see timestamps in your timezone instead of UTC. Includes ±HH:MM offset to avoid ambiguity.

Upgrading

# npm
npm i -g openclaw@latest

# or let your agent do it
/update

The gateway auto-restarts after update. Your sessions resume where they left off.

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Full changelog: GitHub Releases