What are “man-in-the-middle” attacks?
A man in the middle attack (MITM) is an attack in which an attacker is able to read, insert and modify at will, messages between two parties without either party knowing that the link between them has been compromised. The attacker must be able to observe and intercept messages going between the two victims. An example of such an attack is a compromised DNS server that returns a fake IP address for a bank. The machine at the fake IP address captures all traffic from the user, logs all (or relevant) traffic and relays it to the real IP address.
