With regard to network security, what is a man-in-the-middle attack?
In a man-in-the-middle attack, a malicious user somehow manages to sniff out network traffic between two computers and then attacks either end of the transmission. The phrase “man-in-the-middle” comes not from any physical placement (the “man” can be a thousand miles away from the two “ends” that sit within feet of each other in the same room or building) but rather from the fact that communications from one end go through the malicious user’s computer before proceeding to the other end. The man-in-the-middle scenario is dangerous because the malicious user can either invisibly gather information flowing between the two endpoints, or suddenly pretend to be one of the endpoints and fool the other into passing sensitive information to what the endpoint user thinks is a trusted computer. For example, if a bank or credit card web site doesn’t implement good security precautions, a man-in-the-middle attack could intercept the bank or credit card information from a user communicating with th
