Man-in-the-Middle Attack | Essay

Running head: MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE-ATTACK
Man-in-the-Middle Attack
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Man-in-the-Middle attack
A Man-in-the-Middle attack, more popularly known as the MITM is an attack where the
attacker or the hacker is plays an intermediate role between the two parties without any of them
being aware of that. All the information exchange that occurs between the parties are kept a
watch over and the sensitive a confidential information are collected. The hacker may
communicate with either of the two parties with such an elegance and pretend so well that both
of them are pretty assured that the conversation is going on with genuine people. In fact, the
entire conversation is dominated by the attacker (Rahim, 2017). One of the very famous example
of the Man-in-the-Middle attack is eavesdropping at an active level. Man-in-the-Middle attack
can even occur in the open Wi-Fi range where the attacker can directly go through the
unencrypted messages of the victim. In this essay we will discuss about such attacks which have
taken place in real time and had resulted in loss of money and has caused fatal issues to the
systems as well as the individuals.
In the year 2015, a British couple, Mr. and Mrs. Lupton, was attacked by the Man-
in-the-Middle attackers, who attacked and hijacked their email subjecting them to a loss of
£340,000. As per the case file, they purchased a flat for their daughter named Tracey. The
property was purchased near Waterloo situated in the South of London. They bought it worth
£340,000. Tracey had a child back then for which they had to shift to a bigger house. Two days
prior to the date of completion, a mailed was sent to them by their lawyer asking for them for the
details of their bank account for proceeding with the sales. A lot of people trusts the mailing
system and sends the banking details without giving a second thought to it. So were done by the
Luptons. They shared their bank account details with their solicitors without hesitation. The mail
chain was intercepted by the hackers. These hackers acts as an intermediate between the solicitor

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and the Luptons without their knowledge. The mail exchanged between them was very normal
but the receiver was altered. The mail was supposed to go to the solicitor instead it was
intercepted by the fraudsters. A lump sum amount of money was debited from their amount of
which they had no clue just like the lawyer himself.
In the year 2013, in formation was leaked by the NSA to intercept The Onion
Router or Tor users. The Tor is an online network which works anonymously. It is a target set
at high-priority for the NSA, National Security Agency. There is branch of the NSA which
works in the division of the System Intelligence Directorate, popularly known as the SID.
According to Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower for the organization, revealed that the
National Security Agency has developed a technology which exploits some the browsers which
are using the Tor services. It also says that there are few programs that are designed to make it
super easy for ordinary people to install it and use the software according to their requirements.
The powerful anonymity of the Tor technology has a positive and the negative side effect. The
anonymity of the Tor web user look very similar on the internet which makes it easier to locate
and differentiated from the other web user (Huang, and Bashir, 2016). On the other hand, this same
quality of the NSA’s Tor makes it difficult for the NSA agents to differentiate the Tor user and
whether or not the user is present in US or not.
There are two types of Man-in-the-Middle attack. One is active and the other is passive.
Passive MITM attack consists if eavesdropping, where the attackers just observes and collect
data without harming the system or altering the operations (Belkhouja, Mohamed, Al-Ali, Du, and
Guizani, 2018). The problem arises due to the active attacks. Here the attackers inserts malwares
and make drastic changes to the system. This can be done on the basis of interception. In the
above mention cases, the Man-in-the-Middle attack is in its active mode as in both the system,