OpenClaw's Synology Chat dmPolicy=allowlist failed open on empty allowedUserIds, allowing unauthorized agent dispatch

Summary

In openclaw versions 2026.2.22 and 2026.2.23, the optional synology-chat channel plugin had an authorization fail-open condition: when dmPolicy was allowlist and allowedUserIds was empty/unset, unauthorized senders were still allowed through to agent dispatch.

This is assessed as medium severity because it requires channel/plugin setup and Synology sender access, but can still trigger downstream agent/tool actions.

Affected Packages / Versions

• Package: openclaw (npm)
• Affected versions: >= 2026.2.22, <= 2026.2.23
• Latest published affected version at patch time: 2026.2.23
• Planned patched version: 2026.2.24

Details

Root cause was a policy mismatch across plugin code paths:

1. Default resolved DM policy was allowlist.
2. Empty allowedUserIds was treated as allow-all.
3. Webhook auth in allowlist mode depended on that helper.

Result: allowlist with empty list behaved like open access for inbound Synology senders.

Fix Commit(s)

• 0ee30361b8f6ef3f110f3a7b001da6dd3df96bb5
• 7655c0cb3a47d0647cbbf5284e177f90b4b82ddb

Release Process Note

patched_versions is pre-set to the planned next release (>= 2026.2.24). Once npm release 2026.2.24 is published, the advisory can be published directly.

OpenClaw thanks @tdjackey for reporting.

Publication Update (2026-02-25)

openclaw@2026.2.24 is published on npm and contains the fix commit(s) listed above. This advisory now marks >= 2026.2.24 as patched.