What is 'Man-in-the-middle attacks' ? | Cyber Security

 

A  man in middle attack refers to an attack in which an attacker secretly intercepts electronic messages between the sender and the receiver and then captures, inserts and modifies messages during message transmission. If sender transmits messages without appropriate security, the attacker may exploit the vulnerabilities in the network to capture and modify the messages and send the modified messages to the receiver. Since the network transmission still works properly, both the sender and receiver will find it difficult to notice that the messages have been trapped or modified by an intruder. If we use such a computer for online transactions, the man in the middle may capture our bank account number and password to steal money, leading to financial loss. Encrypted connections such as HTTPS (HTTP Secure), SFTP (Secure FTP) etc. should be used for secure transactions, so that intruders cannot modify the messages.