Hacking with Armitage into a Network
The man-in-the-middle attack (often abbreviated MITM, MitM, MIM, MiM, MITMA) incryptography 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 endpointauthentication specifically to prevent MITM attacks. For example, SSL can authenticate one or both parties using a mutually trustedcertification authority.