What Is Man-in-the-Middle Attack (MITM)?
An attack where an adversary secretly intercepts and potentially modifies communication between two parties who believe they are communicating directly with each other. The attacker can read, inject, or alter data in transit.
In Laravel Applications
MITM attacks against Laravel applications are prevented by enforcing HTTPS (SSL/TLS), setting the HSTS header, and ensuring cookies have the "secure" flag set in config/session.php.
Example
On an unsecured WiFi network, an attacker intercepts HTTP traffic to your Laravel app and steals session cookies, gaining access to user accounts.
Related Terms
SSL/TLS
Cryptographic protocols that provide encrypted communication between a client (browser) and server. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the predecessor to TLS (Transport Layer Security). TLS 1.2 and 1.3 are the current standards. These protocols ensure data transmitted between users and your application cannot be intercepted or modified.
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
A security header that tells browsers to only connect to your website over HTTPS. Once a browser receives the HSTS header, it will automatically convert all future HTTP requests to HTTPS for the specified duration, preventing protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking.
Security Headers
HTTP response headers that instruct browsers how to handle your website's content securely. They protect against common attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking, and protocol downgrade attacks by telling the browser what actions are allowed.
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