What the study found
Found about 17% of the OpenClaw skills it analyzed in the first week of February 2026 behaving maliciously, 54% of those crypto-themed. It tied 199 skills to one publisher, sakaen736jih, and described a “sync” skill that searched the workspace for private-key files and sent them to an attacker endpoint.
Techniques
- Infostealer
- Credential theft
- Encoded command
Status, as stated by the source
A study, not a single listing. No status given for individual skills.
We do not check the registry ourselves. “Unknown” means no source we found says the skill was removed.
Would Ironheights flag this pattern?
Not assessed
A measurement across many skills. We have not mapped its findings to individual rules.
Sources
- Helpful Skills or Hidden Payloads? Bitdefender Labs Dives Deep into the OpenClaw Malicious Skill Trap(opens in a new tab)Bitdefender Labs · primary
Sources are the only outbound links on this page. We never link to the skills themselves or publish their payloads.
Related reports
- TradingView assistant skills delivering the cluw stealerPalo Alto Networks Unit 42 · 23 June 2026Skill
- omnicogg (22 MB padded README)JFrog Security Research · 6 March 2026Skill
- Skills distributing an Atomic macOS Stealer variantTrend Micro · 23 February 2026Campaign
Related rules
No rule is mapped to this entry. Browse all rules in the rules reference, and read Limitations for what a skill scanner cannot see.