# What is a man-in-the-middle attack?

In a man-in-the-middle attack, the attacker secretly places themselves between two parties who think they are talking directly, for example between a laptop and the router, or a user and a website. From there they can read the traffic, steal passwords or change what is sent. Common methods are fake Wi-Fi hotspots, ARP spoofing on a local network and tricks that make a device trust the wrong server. Encryption with properly checked certificates, such as HTTPS, defeats most attempts. NetSenX raises ARP spoofing alerts from the Pro plan, which covers the most common local-network form of this attack.

FAQ: [What is…? Network and security terms](https://netsenx.com/en/faq/glossary) · https://netsenx.com/en/faq/what-is-a-man-in-the-middle-attack

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