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The OpenClaw agent epidemic: Why identity is your first line of defense
The elephant in the chat room
Two weeks ago, an open-source AI agent called OpenClaw went viral. It was designed to live on your laptop, read your email, post to social media, and run shell commands - all controlled via chat apps like Slack and Discord with the promise of end-user productivity boost. A vibrant community quickly formed, building extensions and plugins.
Then the security researchers took notice. Within weeks, they discovered over 40,000 exposed instances of the agent (now rebranded as OpenClaw) on the public internet. The damage was swift:
- Attackers extracted API keys and OAuth tokens in minutes using simple prompt injections.
- They impersonated users across platforms with the agent's stolen credentials.
- They took remote control of machines through compromised, supply-chain extensions.
- They established persistent footholds in private development environments.
The alarming part? None of this required "breaking" the software. It only required compromising the identities the agent had been granted. OpenClaw is the first mass-market proof that AI agents are not just chat, they are powerful, always-on identities.
From “Agents talk” to “Agents do”
The OpenClaw incident isn't a one-off. It’s a preview of a fundamental shift from "agents can talk" to "agents can do."
Soon, purpose-built agents will be trusted to be embedded in and operate your most critical workflows: approving access requests, responding to cloud threats, processing purchase orders, and managing sensitive IP. These agents will inherit the same broad permissions as the humans they "help."
When they are compromised and it is a matter of when, not if, every identity they control becomes an entry point for bad actors. OpenClaw is just the preview, the rehearsal.
The real problem: Anarchy of identity
When a human employee's account is compromised, your security team has a playbook: revoke access, rotate credentials, audit activity, and isolate the user.
With the 40,000+ compromised OpenClaw agents, there was no playbook. Deployed as "shadow IT," they were discovered after the fact, with no clear ownership, governance, or identity to manage. You can't run the playbook if there's no identity to begin with.
This is the core of the agent security problem. And it's a problem identity security was born to solve.
How SailPoint governs the agent economy
We are extending our identity security leadership to manage the new agent workforce including shadow OpenClaw. Here’s how SailPoint provides the control you need:
| Capability | What it does |
|---|---|
| Agent Discovery & Ownership | You can't protect what you can't see. We automatically discover and map every agent to its human owner, with support for local agents like OpenClaw coming soon. |
| Lifecycle & Governance | We apply the same discipline to agents as you do to humans. Define what agents should be allowed to do with least-privilege access and use our kill switch to instantly shut down compromised agent identities. |
| Audit & Certification | Gain full visibility into which systems (including other agents) your agents can access. Our certification campaigns let you periodically review and approve agent access, just like your human access reviews. |
| Anomalous Behavior Detection (Coming Later) | Our AI-driven monitoring flags unusual agent activity like accessing a new system or a sudden spike in actions triggering real-time alerts so you can respond to prevent a security incident. |
The result: Agents graduate from Shadow IT to first-class citizens, governed by a sophisticated Identity Framework.
Beyond OpenClaw: A platform-agnostic approach
The approach we've developed is not limited to OpenClaw. It broadly applies to modern agent architectures like Claude CoWork and Cursor that use skills, plugins, and MCP-style integrations to act on behalf of users.
As AI ecosystems proliferate, we are scaling our framework to cover the full agentic landscape—especially the riskiest patterns where autonomous identities gain permissions to access systems, execute tasks, and weave themselves into critical workflows.
Are you ready for the epidemic?
Ask yourself these questions:
- Does my current IAM solution treat agent identity as a first-class citizen?
- Can my SIEM distinguish a legitimate agent action from a compromised one?
- Does my incident response playbook account for non-human identities?
If you answered "no" to any of these, you have a critical gap in your security posture. This is a gap you need to close now, not after an "OpenClaw" incident causes reputational damage to your organization.
At SailPoint, we are building the comprehensive framework for agent governance to secure the future of your business. Get in touch if you'd like to discuss this further.
