What is a "Man in the middle" attack and how to prevent it

What are "Man in the Middle" attacks? As the name suggests, they are those cyberattacks in which the hacker gets in the middle of the communications between sender and receiver, intercepts the message and modifies it. Thus, some hackers managed to steal 1 million euros from an Israeli Startup, and as a consequence, bankrupt it.

The attack intercepted the communications between the venture capital and the Startup, thus managing to cancel a face-to-face meeting between the two, and modified the account number, attached to an email, for the transaction of the funds. The venture capital paid the amount into a fake account controlled by the hackers, thinking it was the Startup's. (access the full article)

How is it done?

How is it done? There are different ways of hacking, but the goal is always the same: to intercept the message and modify it before it reaches its recipient. The message is passed over an unsecured network, controlled by the cyber attacker, and the communication is passed over a network that is under their control. For example, broadcasting a Wi-Fi network with an SSID similar to the authorized network, and trying to get broadcasters to connect to the unsecured network.

How does Tranxfer help mitigate these types of attacks?

Tranxfer offers a secure channel that completely eliminates this cyber threat thanks to its advanced security policies. The files sent by Tranxfer travel with End-to-End encryption, with this, it is guaranteed that the genuine version of the file is available and that there is no one else behind the communications. At Tranxfer we want to raise awareness that cyber threats are real and much more frequent than is generally believed. It is vital to provide your organization with a computer security scheme to prevent it from becoming an easy target for cyber attackers.

So, in these cyberattacks, the hacker or cyberattacker intercepts the message when it is between the Sender and Receiver. These attacks are difficult to detect since the sender is who they say they are, and the message arrives through the normal communication and tone channels, the only thing being that the hacker or cyberattacker has intervened in the message and modified it for their benefit. This cause was one of the 5 most common last year 2021. Its equivalence in the offline world would be that the postman modified the letter before delivering it to its recipient.