[saag] Re: On path Active Attackers, and Meddlers in the M iddle

Michael Richardson <[email protected]> Sun, 05 Jan 2025 17:02:20 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.ietf.saag
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email protected]> wrote:
    > I have always thought changing the terminology for 'man in the middle'
    > to be tilting at wind turbines because it is always a *THING* in the
    > middle, so getting caught up about the arbitrary gender we apply to the

I partly agree.

    > This terminology gives us a principled means of rejecting the whole
    > problem by going for a BETTER, clearer scheme:

    > * Active On-Path Attacker * Passive On-Path Attacker

    > Being on-path definitely gives the attacker an advantage. But being
    > able to change the messages is a heap more powerful than merely
    > observing them.  MITM fails to distinguish between the two cases.

Yes, that (MITM was ambigous) was among the original motivations for replacing the term.
It seemed to me that MITM (the tla) was too entrenched though.
Giving it a different expansion breaks some of that, I think.

    > So rather than trying to get people to call MITM something else, just
    > cross it out and ask 'is this attacker active or passive?' and MITM
    > goes away.

I'm for this.

    >> > HTML:
    >> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-richardson-saag-onpath-attacker-04.html

--
Michael Richardson <[email protected]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide

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