Man-in-the-middle attack

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In cryptography, the man-in-the-middle attack or bucket-brigade attack (often abbreviated MITM) 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, the owner of a public wireless access point can in principle conduct MITM attacks on the users).

A man-in-the-middle attack can only be successful when the attacker can impersonate each endpoint to the satisfaction of the other. Most cryptographic protocols include some form of endpoint authentication specifically to prevent MITM attacks. For example, SSL authenticates the server using a mutually trusted certification authority.

Contents 1 The need for an additional transfer over a secure channel 2 Example of a successful MITM attack against public-key encryption 3 Defenses against the attack 4 MITM in quantum cryptography 5 Beyond cryptography 6 MITM Implementation Examples 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] The need for an additional transfer over a secure channel

With the exception of the Interlock Protocol, all cryptographic systems that are secure against MITM attacks require an additional exchange or transmission of information over some kind of secure channel. Many key agreement methods with different security requirements for the secure channel have been developed.

[edit] Example of a successful MITM attack against public-key encryption

Suppose Alice wishes to communicate with Bob. Meanwhile, Mallory wishes to eavesdrop on the conversation, or possibly deliver a false message to Bob. To get started, Alice must ask Bob for his public key. If Bob sends his public key to Alice, but Mallory is able to intercept it, a man-in-the-middle attack can begin. Mallory sends a forged message to Alice that claims to be from Bob, but includes Mallory's public key. Alice, believing this public key to be Bob's, then encrypts her message with Mallory's key and sends the enciphered message back to Bob. Mallory again intercepts, deciphers the message, keeps a copy, and reenciphers it (after alteration if desired) using the public key Bob originally sent to Alice. When Bob receives the newly enciphered message, he will believe it came from Alice.

This example shows the need for Alice and Bob to have some way to ensure that they are truly using each other's public keys, rather than the public key of an attacker. Otherwise, such attacks are generally possible, in principle, against any message sent using public-key technology. Fortunately, there are a variety of techniques that help defend against MITM attacks.

[edit] Defenses against the attack

Various defenses against MITM attacks use authentication techniques that are based on:

• Public key infrastructures
• Stronger mutual authentication
• Secret keys (high information entropy secrets)
• Passwords (low information entropy secrets)
• Other criteria, such as voice recognition or other biometrics
• Off-the-Record Messaging for instant messenging

The integrity of public keys must generally be assured in some manner, but need not be secret. Passwords and shared secret keys have the additional secrecy requirement. Public keys can be verified by a Certificate Authority, whose public key is distributed through a secure channel (for example, with a web browser or OS installation). Public keys can also be verified by a web of trust that distributes public keys through a secure channel (for example by face-to-face meetings).

See key agreement for a classification of protocols that use various forms of keys and passwords to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

[edit] MITM in quantum cryptography

Quantum cryptography protocols typically authenticate part of or all of their classical communication with an unconditionally secure authentication scheme based on e.g. Wegman-Carter authentication.

[edit] Beyond cryptography

MITM should be seen as a general problem resulting from the presence of intermediate parties acting as proxy for clients on either side. If they are trustworthy and competent, all may be well; if they are not, nothing will be. How can one distinguish the cases? By acting as proxy and appearing as the trusted client to each side, the intermediate attacker can carry out much mischief, including various attacks against the confidentiality or integrity of the data passing through it.

A notable non-cryptographic man-in-the-middle attack was perpetrated by one version of a Belkin wireless network router in 2003. Periodically, it would take over an HTTP connection being routed through it: it would fail to pass the traffic on to destination, but instead itself respond as the intended server. The reply it sent, in place of the web page the user had requested, was an advertisement for another Belkin product. After an outcry from technically-literate users, this 'feature' was removed from later versions of the router's firmware.^[1]

Another example of a non-cryptographic man-in-the-middle attack is the "Turing porn farm." Brian Warner says this is a "conceivable attack" that spammers could use to defeat CAPTCHAs.^[2] The spammer sets up a pornographic web site where access requires that the user solves the CAPTCHAs in question. However, Jeff Atwood points out that this attack is merely theoretical — there is no evidence that any spammer has ever built a Turing porn farm".^[3] However, as reported in an October, 2007 news story while perhaps not being a farm as such, spammers have indeed built a Windows game in which users type in CAPTCHAs acquired from the Yahoo webmail service, and are rewarded with pornographic pictures.^[4] This allows the spammers to create temporary free email accounts with which to send out spam.

[edit] MITM Implementation Examples

• dsniff - A tool for SSL MITM attacks
• Cain - A Windows GUI tool which can perform MITM attacks, along with sniffing and ARP poisoning
• Ettercap - A tool for LAN based MITM attacks
• Karma - A tool that uses 802.11 Evil Twin attacks to perform MITM attacks
• AirJack - A tool that demonstrates 802.11 based MITM attacks
• wsniff - A tool for 802.11 HTTP/HTTPS based MITM attacks

[edit] See also

• Computer security
• Cryptanalysis
• Secure channel
• Digital signature
• Key management
• Key agreement protocol
• Password-authenticated key agreement
• Interlock Protocol
• Miss in the middle attack
• Mutual authentication
• Quantum cryptography
• Relay attack
• Meet-in-the-middle attack
• Babington Plot

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• MITM Online Demonstration
• Non-cryptographic MITM attack involving nanny references
• Porn Rewards Users To Get Past Anti-Spam Captchas