A man-in-the-middle attack is a cyber threat (a form of eavesdropping assault) in which a cybercriminal wiretaps a conversation or data transmission involving two people. When a cybercriminal joins a two-way chat, they appear to be authentic participants, giving them the ability to gather SENSITIVE information and RESPOND in a number of ways. The main purpose of this type of attack is to gain access to personal information about our ENTERPRISE or consumers. A cybercriminal could, for example, intercept data flowing between the target device and the network on an unprotected Wi-Fi network.

As we can understand from the image, a man-in-the-middle attack is a form of eavesdropping attack in which an attacker INTERCEPTS a conversation or data TRANSFER in progress. The attackers pose as both genuine participants after inserting themselves in the "middle" of the transfer. This allows an attacker to intercept data and information from both parties while also providing malicious links or other information to both genuine participants in a way that may not be detected until it is too late.