Meet-in-the-Middle Attack
A Meet-in-the-middle Attack (MITM) is a type of cyber attack in which an attacker uses a combination of brute force and cryptanalysis to create a matching pair of keys to decrypt encrypted data.
MITM attacks are commonly used by hackers to crack symmetric key algorithms like DES or triple DES which are used to encrypt data. The attack works by creating two tables of all possible combinations of keys and then searching them simultaneously to find matches that yield the same output.
The idea is to encrypt the plaintext with a series of keys and compare the ciphertext with the corresponding ciphertext that is obtained after decrypting and re-encrypting it using the same key as the encryption. The attacker creates both tables, one for encryption keys and one for decryption keys, and then combines them to search for a matching pair of keys.
This technique requires considerable computational power, but it can be effective if the keys are relatively small or if the encryption algorithm has vulnerabilities. To prevent MITM attacks, it is recommended to use strong asymmetric key algorithms like RSA or ECC instead.