Want to know about man in the middle (MITM) attack in computer security

Man in the middle attack is a high level hacking attack on a communication channel or connection between two system to gain access to the communicated critical data. The detailed answer to the query is given below -

i) Man in the middle attack is said to be taken place where a malicious program used by a hacker presents itself as a proxy into the communication channel between two genuine systems or persons.

ii) The system should be secured in this respect as solutions to this are available in the industry.

iii) If system is secured it won't happen otherwise by the time user knows about it at the end of the hijacked session, the harm would be done by that time.

iv) In this hacking technique the intruder inserts himself between the two persons and injects false information and collects or intercepts the crucial security data between them.

v) This is something of very high level of hacking and the critical data like bank account number and other instructions can be intercepted and misused by directing the end persons to incur mistakes in their transactions. The hacker can intercept a public key also and the people at the end of the line would believe him as the true person.

vi) This is one unique way to hijack a session between the genuine parties but there are other types of similar attacks also like Sidejacking, Evil Twin and Sniffing which also work and operate on similar lines of techniques of session hijacking and extracting data for malicious purposes.

vii) The basic purpose of it to gain access to the secure data like transactions going through a network and divert them to unintended places.

In man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) the attacker secretly relays and alters the communications between two parties without any knowledge to the two parties and they believe that they are directly communicating with each other.
A MITM attack uses the real-time processing of transactions, conversations or transfer of other data.
Attackers can intercept, send and receive data. This data is never meant to be for them. No outside party knows about it. The middle man will get inserted between the client and the server.

There are two forms of attacks. First involves physical proximity to the intended target, and the second one involves malicious software or malware.

MITM mainly attacks using unsecured WIFI. That is why we should not take any connection from public wifi.

This attack requires three components. There's the victim, the entity with which the victim is trying to communicate, and the "man in the middle," who's intercepting the victim's communications.