Man-in-the-middle attack
lastmod 2018-08-17created 2015-10-201 edits
A man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) is an attack technique that manipulates network communication to eavesdrop on or tamper with its contents. In a man-in-the-middle attack, an intermediary intrudes between two parties who are communicating; both parties believe they are connected to each other, but in reality both are connected to the intermediary, who eavesdrops on and tampers with the information sent from one side before passing it on to the other.
Many cryptographic protocols use authentication to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. For example, the TLS/SSL protocol uses authentication based on public keys.