OpenClaw's owner-only gateway tool access checks were incomplete in specific authenticated DM flows

Summary

In authenticated non-owner DM sessions, a narrow tool-invocation path could reach broader-than-intended owner-only gateway actions.

Impact

This requires an authenticated non-owner sender in a DM session and a specific tool invocation path. No unauthenticated access is involved, and this does not provide direct code execution by itself.

Root Cause

• Some gateway call paths were still using broader default scopes instead of method-level least-privilege scopes.
• Owner-only enforcement depended on tool-name checks and was not consistently metadata-driven across all call paths.

Affected Packages / Versions

• Package: openclaw (npm)
• Affected: <= 2026.2.17 (latest published npm version as of February 19, 2026)
• Patched: 2026.2.19

Remediation

• Refactored gateway method scope mapping to a data-driven table and added guard tests to ensure all exposed core gateway methods stay classified.
• Centralized owner-only enforcement in tool policy wrappers and tool metadata.
• Marked owner-only tools explicitly (cron, gateway, whatsapp_login) and removed duplicated per-tool owner checks.
• Refactored gateway call path internals into smaller helpers while preserving behavior and coverage.

Fix Commit(s)

• a40c10d3e24568b1e2947c104484be74bf66b8d2
• 2777d8ad91ef1e8a7c6f5b4b18f8507be7d02914
• 3d7ad1cfca4daaa84cd553e843e0e08fa6201349

OpenClaw thanks @Adam55A-code for reporting.