n. A computer security breach in which a malicious user intercepts — and possibly alters — data traveling along a network.
2002
If it delivers what's promised, Funk's Odyssey software will let enterprises use familiar password-based authentication for wireless LANs and existing authentication databases, but protect these interactions from the special weaknesses of wireless links, such as eavesdropping or so-called "man in the middle" attacks.
1994 (earliest)
Computers operating at speeds far in excess of current ones are technically feasible. Building them is only a matter of money. The cost of $4, $10 or $50 million might be high for a university or major corporation, it's peanuts for NSA. Informed sources indicate that such a computer would be capable of cracking a Clipper cipher in a matter of minutes. Clipper also lends itself, under proper conditions, to a 'man in the middle' attack.
This exploit also goes by the name TCP hijacking (where TCP — Transmission Control Protocol — is a technology that controls how data is transmitted across a network).