MITM

Definition

A Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack is a security breach where an attacker intercepts and potentially alters the communication between two parties without their knowledge. This type of attack can occur in various forms, such as eavesdropping on unencrypted traffic or manipulating data in transit. MITM attacks are particularly dangerous because they can lead to data theft, unauthorized access, and compromised integrity of communications.

Secure Settings Example

To mitigate MITM attacks, ensure all communications are encrypted using TLS. Here’s an example of a secure Nginx server configuration enforcing TLS:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name example.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
    ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384';
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
}

Insecure Settings Example

An insecure configuration example would be using outdated or weak protocols and ciphers, which are susceptible to MITM attacks:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name example.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key;
    ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1;
    ssl_ciphers 'DES-CBC3-SHA:RC4-SHA';
}