When attackers intercept your AI communications
Without proper encryption, attackers can intercept and modify communications between your AI agent and external services, stealing data or injecting malicious responses.
A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack occurs when an attacker secretly intercepts and potentially alters communication between two parties. For AI agents, this means intercepting:
- Prompts sent to the AI - Responses from LLM providers - API calls to external services - Data transfers to databases - Authentication tokens and credentials
MITM attacks are possible when encryption is missing, misconfigured, or can be bypassed. In self-hosted environments, proper TLS configuration is often overlooked, leaving communications vulnerable.
Traffic sent over HTTP instead of HTTPS can be read by anyone on the network path.
Disabling certificate verification (common in development) allows fake certificates.
Redirecting domain lookups to attacker-controlled servers.
On local networks, redirecting traffic through the attacker's machine.
Downgrading HTTPS connections to HTTP through proxy manipulation.
Fake WiFi networks that intercept all traffic.
A developer working from a coffee shop:
1. Connected to what they thought was the shop's WiFi 2. It was actually an attacker's rogue access point 3. Their AI agent made API calls over HTTP (not HTTPS) 4. The attacker captured their OpenAI API key from the traffic 5. The key was used to generate thousands of dollars in API charges 6. Malicious responses were also injected, causing the AI to behave unexpectedly
This attack is trivial to execute with freely available tools.
When you self-host your OpenClaw, you're responsible for addressing these risks:
Clawctl includes built-in protection against mitm attacks:
All traffic is encrypted with modern TLS 1.3. No HTTP, no exceptions.
Certificates are automatically provisioned and renewed. No self-signed certs.
Critical connections use certificate pinning to prevent MITM even with compromised CAs.
Security configurations are hardened by default. No insecure development settings in production.
Unusual network patterns that might indicate MITM attempts trigger alerts.
Whether you use Clawctl or not, follow these best practices:
Clawctl includes enterprise-grade protection against this threat and many others. Deploy your OpenClaw securely in 60 seconds.