The Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is possible in
both wired and wireless networks. In a wired network,
one either needs to spoof DNS requests or ARP requests
or compromise a valid gateway machine to obtain access
to the clients traffic. In a wireless network, since there is
no authentication of the network or the client is haphaz-
ardly using an untrusted hotspot, the MITM is relatively
simple. The attacker connects (using wireless) to a wire-
less network. He then provides service to other clients with
another access point that has the same SSID as the host net-
work. Clients associate with the attackers “rogue” access
point and traffic is routed though the attackers router. The
attacker can not only sniff, but can actually change the traf-
fic, insert viruses into downloaded files, change web pages,
and use known vulnerabilities in browser scripting to attack
the client machines when they visit well known web pages.
This attack is a particularly nefarious and easy to perform,
even on sophisticated users. In addition, the encryption be-
tween the access point (rogue) and client does not protect
the client.