Man-in-the-middle attacks describe a special form of hacker attack: The attacker reads or manipulates data that is exchanged unencrypted between the victim's computer and the data centers. The "man in the middle" often gains this insight via open WLAN connections.
In man-in-the-middle attacks, victims are often unaware that they are being eavesdropped on. In practice, eavesdropping attacks can take different forms. It is easy for the attackers if the victim surfs via a WLAN network that is not password-protected: The attacker scans this network for connected computers or smartphones and discovers the victim's device through so-called sniffers. These are software programs that browse networks and display the required information of the individual devices.
For the actual access, the attacker pretends to be the victim, for example, by giving the router the same "address" as his victim. This gives the attacker a copy of all the information that the victim exchanges with the server. Alternatively, the attacker sets up his own supposed WIFI network, to which the victim's device connects. Now all the data converges at the attacker's end. Unfortunately, these man-in-the-middle attacks are almost impossible to detect. Better protection is offered by well-established virtual private networks (VPN) and the use of transport encryption (https) whenever possible. This means that data is sent via secured transport tunnels and is better protected against attacks.
