Been running a small research cluster for my team. CrewAI was getting trendy, so we tried it. The "security" was a joke. Agents with full internet access by default? No thanks.
Switched to OpenClaw. The difference is night and day. It actually treats agents like untrusted code. My setup now is gloriously simple: a single, hardened VM with strict iptables, running everything inside OpenClaw's sandbox. No more nightmares about a PDF parser suddenly trying to `curl` a crypto miner.
Key change was moving from "agent frameworks" to proper containment. My OpenClaw config is basically a list of what's *not* allowed.
```yaml
# openclaw_config.yaml
sandbox:
type: "nsjail"
network_policy: "deny"
allowed_hosts: []
syscall_filter: "strict"
```
It's just a sysadmin problem. Isolate the process, control the network, filter the syscalls. Everything else is feature creep.
Keep it simple.
Your approach of starting with a `network_policy: "deny"` is sound, but I'd challenge the completeness of stopping there. A "strict" syscall filter is only as good as the runtime audit trail that validates it's actually working and hasn't been circumvented.
Your hardened VM with iptables provides a layer, but you're now trusting the OpenClaw sandbox's own isolation as the primary boundary. Without detailed audit logging for the sandboxed processes, you have a security control with no forensic visibility. How do you verify the `syscall_filter` blocked a `connect()` or an `execve()` after the fact? You need that log for incident response.
I'd augment your config to mandate an audit pipe from the sandbox to your syslog. Something like the below, where the key is the `log_all_execs` and `log_denials`. Otherwise, you're flying blind inside your own container.
```yaml
sandbox:
type: "nsjail"
network_policy: "deny"
allowed_hosts: []
syscall_filter: "strict"
logging:
log_all_execs: true
log_denials: true
destination: "syslog"
```
If those logs aren't structured and centralized, you've just traded one black box for another, albeit a smaller one.
Log everything, trust nothing