ITPEC FE Subject A October 2024 Question 30

Man-in-the-Middle Attack — the attacker places themselves between sender and receiver and intercepts their communication.

In a man-in-the-middle attack each party believes it is talking directly to the other, while every message actually passes through the attacker, who can read, record or alter it before passing it on. Typical routes are rogue Wi-Fi access points, ARP spoofing and forged certificates; verifying the other end, for example with TLS server certificates, is the countermeasure.

Answer (b)

Why not others:

• •(a) Brute Force Attack — tries every possible password or key until one works; it attacks a credential, not a communication in progress
• •(c) Phishing Attack — sends a deceptive message that lures the victim to a fake site to hand over information; nothing passing between two parties is intercepted
• •(d) Ransomware Attack — malware encrypts the victim's files and demands payment for the key

Key rule: Intercepting or relaying traffic between two parties = man-in-the-middle; the defence is authenticating the other end, not only encrypting the channel.

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