“Man-in-the-Middle” translates as middleman. Because in such an attack, someone places themselves as a middleman between two communication parties – without their knowledge.
The aim is to read the communication, to change it if necessary and to find out confidential information such as passwords and login data.
There are different approaches to these attacks. Basically, they can be divided into attacks that target
An attack pattern that is easy to understand even for laymen is the feigning of public Wi-Fi access, e.g. in airports, hotels or cafés. The supposed Wi-Fi access has a legitimate-sounding name and is characterized by a strong signal. But all traffic passes through the man-in-the-middle system – including all passwords, usernames, bank details, etc. Anyone who uses this supposed Wi-Fi access does not notice anything about the attack. This is because the man-in-the-middle forwards the data to the destination address.
In principle, this applies to every data exchange, especially via the Internet.
In any case, you should consider man-in-the-middle attacks before and when using public Wi-Fi access.
