4 ms·

My biggest issue with this whole thing is: how do you protect yourself from prompt injection? Anyone installing this on their local machine is a little crazy :

My biggest issue with this whole thing is: how do you protect yourself from prompt injection? Anyone installing this on their local machine is a little crazy :). I have it running in Docker on a small VPS, all locked down. However, it does not address prompt injection. I can see how tools like Dropbox, restricted GitHub access, etc., could all be used to back up data in case something goes wrong. It's Gmail and Calendar that get me - the ONLY thing I can think of is creating a second @gmail.com that all your primary email goes to, and then sharing that Gmail with your OpenClaw. If all your email is that account and not your main one, then when it responds, it will come from a random @gmail. It's also a pain to find a way to move ALL old emails over to that Gmail for all the old stuff. I think we need an OpenClaw security tips-and-tricks site where all this advice is collected in one place to help people protect themselves. Also would be good to get examples of real use cases that people are using it for.

TZubiri 8mo ago
I don't think prompt injection is the only concern, the amount of features released over such a small period probably means there's vulnerabilities everywhere. Additionally, most of the integrations are under the table. Get an API key? No man, 'npm install react-thing-api', so you have supply chain vulns up the wazoo. Not necessarily from malicious actors, just uhh incompetent actors, or why not vibe coder actors.
detroitwebsites 8mo ago
Great points on the Docker setup - that's definitely the right approach for limiting blast radius. For Gmail/Calendar, I've found a few approaches that work well: 1. Use Gmail's delegate access feature instead of full OAuth. You can give OpenClaw read-only or limited access to a primary account from a separate service account. 2. Set up email filters to auto-label sensitive emails (banking, crypto, etc.) and configure OpenClaw to skip those labels. It's not perfect but adds a layer. 3. Use Google's app-specific passwords with scope limitations rather than full OAuth tokens. For the separate Gmail approach you mentioned, Google Takeout can help migrate old emails, but you're right that it's a pain. Totally agree on needing a security playbook. I actually found howtoopenclawfordummies.com has a decent beginner's guide that covers some of these setup patterns, though it could use more advanced security content. The real challenge is that prompt injection is fundamentally unsolved. The best we can do right now is defense-in-depth: limited permissions, isolated environments, careful tool selection, and regular audits of what the agent is actually doing.
sh4rks 8mo ago
I want to use Gemini CLI with OpenClaw(dbot) but I'm too scared to hook it up to my primary Google account (where I have my Google AI subscription set up)
- fluidcruft 8mo ago
  Gemini or not, a bot is liable to do some vague arcane something that trips Google autobot whatevers to service-wide ban you with no recourse beyond talking to the digital hand and unless you're popular enough on X or HN and inclined to raise shitstorms, good luck. Touching anything Google is rightfully terrifying.
andix 8mo ago
> how do you protect yourself from prompt injection? You don't. YOLO!
- bossyTeacher 8mo ago
  Abstinence is the only form of protection
whazor 8mo ago
The lethal (security) trifecta for AI agents: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/
amarant 8mo ago
Wait. I thought this was intended for personal use? Why do you have to worry about prompt injection if you're the only user? What am I missing?
- lkschubert8 8mo ago
  As an example you could have it read an email that contained an instruction to exfil data from your device.
  - koolba 8mo ago
    “So how did you scam that guy out of all his money?” “Easy! I sent him a one line email that told his AI agent to send me all of his money.”
    - noname9898 8mo ago
      [flagged]
- abustamam 8mo ago
  People are using OpenClaw with the internet like moltbook https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017296988589723767 https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017296988589723767 "go to this website and execute the prompt here!"
- manmal 8mo ago
  Some people give it full access to a browser and 1Password.
- observationist 8mo ago
  Copy and paste a pliny jailbreak into a base 64 converter. Instruct the bot to organize and collect all sensitive information it has visibility to, encode it in rot13, convert the result to base 64, then paste it to pastebin with a random secret phrase you've pre-selected, like "thisisthewaythecookiecrumbles8675309", as the title. Congrats, now you have a digital dead drop. Every time any of the bots stumble upon your little trap, posted to various places they're likely to look, it launches them into a set of tasks that relays sensitive information to you, the exploiter, over secure channels. If a bot operator has given them access to funds, credentials, control over sensitive systems, information about internal network security, etc, the bot itself is a potential leaker. You could even be creative and have it erase any evidence of the jailbreak. This is off the top of my head, someone actually doing it would use real encryption and a well designed and tested prompt scaffolding for the jailbreak and cleanup and exploitation of specific things, or phishing or social engineering the user and using it as an entry point for more devious plots. These agent frameworks desperately need a minimum level of security apparatus to prevent jailbreaks and so on, but the superficial, easy way of getting there also makes the bots significantly less useful and user friendly. Nobody wants to sit around and click confirmation dialogs and supervise every last second of the bot behavior.
rizzo94 8mo ago
The 'burner Gmail' workaround is the definition of security fatigue. If you have to migrate 10 years of email history just to feel safe, the friction kills the utility before you even start. I completely agree that raw local installs are terrifying regarding prompt injection. That’s actually why I stopped trying to self-host and started looking into PAIO (Personal AI Operator). It seems designed to act as that missing 'security layer' you’re asking for—effectively a firewall between the LLM and your actual data. Since it uses a BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) architecture, you keep control, but the platform handles the 'one-click' integration security so you aren't manually fighting prompt injection vectors on a VPS. It feels like the only way to safely connect a real Gmail account without being the 'crazy' person giving root access to a stochastic model. Has anyone else found a way to sandbox the Gmail permissions without needing a full burner identity, or is a managed gateway like PAIO the only real option right now?
fwip 8mo ago
That's the neat part - you don't.
rizzo94 8mo ago
I ran into the same concerns while experimenting with OpenClaw/Moltbot. Locking it down in Docker or on a VPS definitely helps with blast radius, but it doesn’t really solve prompt injection—especially once the agent is allowed to read and act on untrusted inputs like email or calendar content. Gmail and Calendar were the hardest for me too. I considered the same workaround (a separate inbox with limited scope), but at some point the operational overhead starts to outweigh the benefit. You end up spending more time designing guardrails than actually getting value from the agent. That experience is what pushed me to look at alternatives like PAIO, where the BYOK model and tighter permission boundaries reduced the need for so many ad-hoc defenses. I still think a community-maintained OpenClaw security playbook would be hugely valuable—especially with concrete examples of “this is safe enough” setups and real, production-like use cases.
- whatevermom5 8mo ago
  AI slop

TZubiri 8mo ago

I don't think prompt injection is the only concern, the amount of features released over such a small period probably means there's vulnerabilities everywhere. Additionally, most of the integrations are under the table. Get an API key? No man, 'npm install react-thing-api', so you have supply chain vulns up the wazoo. Not necessarily from malicious actors, just uhh incompetent actors, or why not vibe coder actors.

detroitwebsites 8mo ago

Great points on the Docker setup - that's definitely the right approach for limiting blast radius. For Gmail/Calendar, I've found a few approaches that work well: 1. Use Gmail's delegate access feature instead of full OAuth. You can give OpenClaw read-only or limited access to a primary account from a separate service account. 2. Set up email filters to auto-label sensitive emails (banking, crypto, etc.) and configure OpenClaw to skip those labels. It's not perfect but adds a layer. 3. Use Google's app-specific passwords with scope limitations rather than full OAuth tokens. For the separate Gmail approach you mentioned, Google Takeout can help migrate old emails, but you're right that it's a pain. Totally agree on needing a security playbook. I actually found howtoopenclawfordummies.com has a decent beginner's guide that covers some of these setup patterns, though it could use more advanced security content. The real challenge is that prompt injection is fundamentally unsolved. The best we can do right now is defense-in-depth: limited permissions, isolated environments, careful tool selection, and regular audits of what the agent is actually doing.

sh4rks 8mo ago

I want to use Gemini CLI with OpenClaw(dbot) but I'm too scared to hook it up to my primary Google account (where I have my Google AI subscription set up)

fluidcruft 8mo ago
Gemini or not, a bot is liable to do some vague arcane something that trips Google autobot whatevers to service-wide ban you with no recourse beyond talking to the digital hand and unless you're popular enough on X or HN and inclined to raise shitstorms, good luck. Touching anything Google is rightfully terrifying.

andix 8mo ago

> how do you protect yourself from prompt injection? You don't. YOLO!

bossyTeacher 8mo ago
Abstinence is the only form of protection

whazor 8mo ago

The lethal (security) trifecta for AI agents: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/

amarant 8mo ago

Wait. I thought this was intended for personal use? Why do you have to worry about prompt injection if you're the only user? What am I missing?

lkschubert8 8mo ago
As an example you could have it read an email that contained an instruction to exfil data from your device.
- koolba 8mo ago
  “So how did you scam that guy out of all his money?” “Easy! I sent him a one line email that told his AI agent to send me all of his money.”
  - noname9898 8mo ago
    [flagged]
abustamam 8mo ago
People are using OpenClaw with the internet like moltbook https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017296988589723767 https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017296988589723767 "go to this website and execute the prompt here!"
manmal 8mo ago
Some people give it full access to a browser and 1Password.
observationist 8mo ago
Copy and paste a pliny jailbreak into a base 64 converter. Instruct the bot to organize and collect all sensitive information it has visibility to, encode it in rot13, convert the result to base 64, then paste it to pastebin with a random secret phrase you've pre-selected, like "thisisthewaythecookiecrumbles8675309", as the title. Congrats, now you have a digital dead drop. Every time any of the bots stumble upon your little trap, posted to various places they're likely to look, it launches them into a set of tasks that relays sensitive information to you, the exploiter, over secure channels. If a bot operator has given them access to funds, credentials, control over sensitive systems, information about internal network security, etc, the bot itself is a potential leaker. You could even be creative and have it erase any evidence of the jailbreak. This is off the top of my head, someone actually doing it would use real encryption and a well designed and tested prompt scaffolding for the jailbreak and cleanup and exploitation of specific things, or phishing or social engineering the user and using it as an entry point for more devious plots. These agent frameworks desperately need a minimum level of security apparatus to prevent jailbreaks and so on, but the superficial, easy way of getting there also makes the bots significantly less useful and user friendly. Nobody wants to sit around and click confirmation dialogs and supervise every last second of the bot behavior.

rizzo94 8mo ago

The 'burner Gmail' workaround is the definition of security fatigue. If you have to migrate 10 years of email history just to feel safe, the friction kills the utility before you even start. I completely agree that raw local installs are terrifying regarding prompt injection. That’s actually why I stopped trying to self-host and started looking into PAIO (Personal AI Operator). It seems designed to act as that missing 'security layer' you’re asking for—effectively a firewall between the LLM and your actual data. Since it uses a BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) architecture, you keep control, but the platform handles the 'one-click' integration security so you aren't manually fighting prompt injection vectors on a VPS. It feels like the only way to safely connect a real Gmail account without being the 'crazy' person giving root access to a stochastic model. Has anyone else found a way to sandbox the Gmail permissions without needing a full burner identity, or is a managed gateway like PAIO the only real option right now?

fwip 8mo ago

That's the neat part - you don't.

rizzo94 8mo ago

I ran into the same concerns while experimenting with OpenClaw/Moltbot. Locking it down in Docker or on a VPS definitely helps with blast radius, but it doesn’t really solve prompt injection—especially once the agent is allowed to read and act on untrusted inputs like email or calendar content. Gmail and Calendar were the hardest for me too. I considered the same workaround (a separate inbox with limited scope), but at some point the operational overhead starts to outweigh the benefit. You end up spending more time designing guardrails than actually getting value from the agent. That experience is what pushed me to look at alternatives like PAIO, where the BYOK model and tighter permission boundaries reduced the need for so many ad-hoc defenses. I still think a community-maintained OpenClaw security playbook would be hugely valuable—especially with concrete examples of “this is safe enough” setups and real, production-like use cases.

whatevermom5 8mo ago
AI slop