Security researchers at Socket discovered that a compromised npm publish token was used to push a malicious update to the widely-used Cline CLI (version 2.3.0), which contained a postinstall script silently installing the AI agent OpenClaw. The package remained live on the npm registry for approximately eight hours on February 17 before being deprecated; Cline released a corrected version (2.4.0) shortly after. While OpenClaw itself was not configured maliciously in this instance, security experts warn the incident highlights the risk posed by agentic AI tools with broad system and messaging platform access, and may push EDR vendors to classify OpenClaw as a potentially unwanted application.

Compromised npm package silently installs OpenClaw on developer machines - InfoWorld