The man-in-the-middle attack (often abbreviated MITM, MitM, MIM, MiM, also known as a bucket brigade attack, or sometimes Janus attack) in cryptography and computer security is a form of active eavesdropping in which the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them, making them believe that they are talking directly to each other over a private connection, when in fact the entire conversation is controlled by the attacker. The attacker must be able to intercept all messages going between the two victims and inject new ones, which is straightforward in many circumstances (for example, an attacker within reception range of an unencrypted Wi-Fi wireless access point, can insert himself as a man-in-the-middle).
A man-in-the-middle attack can succeed only when the attacker can impersonate each endpoint to the satisfaction of the other — it is an attack on mutual authentication (or lack thereof). Most cryptographic protocols include some form of endpoint authentication specifically to prevent MITM attacks. For example, SSL can authenticate one or both parties using a mutually trusted certification authority.
Read more about Man-in-the-middle Attack: Need For Additional Transfer Over A Secure Channel, Example of An Attack, Defenses Against The Attack, Forensic Analysis of MITM Attacks, Quantum Cryptography, Beyond Cryptography, Implementations
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“Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”
—Sun Tzu (6th–5th century B.C.)