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Network MitM

Man-in-the-Middle attacks: the adversary controls the network path between you and the service you’re talking to. TLS defeats most of these — but plenty of attacks (cert pinning bypass on rooted devices, downgrade attacks, captive-portal abuse, IMSI catchers on cellular) still work in 2026.

  • Rogue WiFi / Evil twin — attacker stands up an AP with your home/office SSID, captures traffic from clients that auto-connect.
  • IMSI catcher / Stingray — fake cellular tower; downgrades to 2G; intercepts SMS and voice. Used at protests, near embassies, by law enforcement, and increasingly by criminal actors.
  • ARP poisoning — on a LAN you don’t trust (conference, hotel, coffee shop), adversary redirects your traffic through their machine.
  • Captive-portal abuse — fake captive portal harvesting credentials.
  • TLS downgrade / SSL stripping — increasingly mitigated by HSTS but still works against legacy HTTP origins.