Question

INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)

28. Hackers have employed ‘Man in the Middle Attack (MITM)’ on your IT infrastrucutre. How would you explain (with a suitable diagram) this type of attack to your apprentice who has just started working for you?

Answer 1

MITM is a kind of cyber-attack where the attacker positions himself in a conversation between a user and an application. One example of a MITM attack is active eavesdropping. In active eavesdropping, the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them. It makes the receiver believe that they are talking directly to each other over a private connection. But actually, the attacker is controlling the entire conversation.

The goal of an attack is to steal personal information, such as login credentials, account details, and credit card numbers. And this stolen personal information could be used for identity theft, unapproved fund transfers, and so on.

Example:

Suppose Alice wishes to communicate with Bob. Meanwhile, Eve wishes to intercept the conversation.

1. Alice asks Bob for his public key.

2. Bob sends his public key to Alice

3. Eve intercept it, a MITM attack can begin.

4. Eve sends Alice a forged message that appears to originate from Bob, by including Eve's public key.

5. Alice, believing this public key to be Bob's and encrypts the received message with Eve's key

6. Alice sends the enciphered message back to Bob.

7. Eve again intercepts, deciphers the message using her private key, possibly alters it if she wants,

8. Re-enciphers it using the public key she intercepted from Bob when he originally tried to send it to Alice.

9. Bob receives the newly enciphered message, he believes it came from Alice.

This is the flow of Man in the middle attack

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