Ever heard of the Man-in-the-middle attack? This type of attack allows criminals to monitor communications, capturing data from innocent people, who may have amounts from their bank accounts deposited for the scammers.
And know that your organization and employees may be subject to it when connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi networks. That’s why it’s important to know more about this type of attack and how to protect yourself. Happy reading!
Do you know what a Man-in-the-middle attack is?
As already said, a Man-in-the-middle attack happens when a criminal manages to infiltrate third-party conversations and information exchanges and steal valuable data. One of the common actions is the hijacking of login and password data from online banks and carrying out financial transactions to the account of the scammers.
These scammers often act by blocking and stealing from the user without them noticing, passively. This can also happen actively, when they impersonate the person and change the content of the messages.
How to identify a Man-in-the-middle attack?
This is one of the most difficult threats to detect, however, it is possible to pay attention to the following possible signs of a Man-in-the-middle attack:
-
- network connections in atypical locations;
-
- URLs with suspicious characters, which may be omitting a hijacking attack;
-
- disconnects that happen repeatedly or unexpectedly.
How to protect yourself from a Man-in-the-middle attack?
Taking preventive actions is one of the biggest recommendations to protect your data from any cyberattack. In addition to paying attention to the websites you have visited, making use only of web addresses that start with “https”, which means secure, it is possible to follow some steps to be safe:
- Encrypt traffic
By encrypting the traffic between the network and the device, you can defend against potential man-in-the-middle attacks.
- Use a firewall
The firewall is responsible for offering an extra layer of security between the networks used and your machine, protecting traffic and making it difficult for hackers to intercept it, although it is not completely foolproof.
- Keep your security software up-to-date
It is important to always be up to date, since cybercriminals are always looking for ways to adapt and improve their practices to intercept your data.
Thus, it is important to keep the entire network protected with effective solutions and keep your team trained and updated.
Finally, in addition to being aware of this type of attack, it is important to act in prevention for any type of threat. So, learn how to protect your company from cyber attacks and threats.
With more than 5,000 clients, Blockbit is one of the leading manufacturers of cybersecurity solutions, empowering businesses to protect themselves against a wide range of threats, vulnerabilities, and cyberattacks, whether internal or external, generic or specific.