Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attack Based Hijacking of HTTP Traffic Using Open Source Tools

A practical attack which could be classified as “Man in the Middle” attack (MITM) is demonstrated and reported in this paper. In MITM, a hacker redirects traffic between the user and the communication gateway. The common way to hijack is by signaling out a Wi-Fi network using a combination of techniques known as ARP spoofing and SSL stripping. The SSL (Secure Socket Layer) header and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) packet generated at the application layer (Layer 7 on OSI model) of a computer are attached to the data being transferred for security. Thus, on secured sites, URL would turn green and display HTTPS. This work demonstrates the MITM attack over secure network connections and rerouting of all the traffic from victim's machine towards the attacker's machine.