Computers are increasingly mobile and, to serve them, more and more public spaces (cafes, airports, libraries, etc.) offer their customers WiFi access. When a web browser on such a network requests a resource, it is implicitly trusting the hotspot not to interfere with the communication. A malicious computer hooked up to the network could alter the traffic, however, and this can have some unpleasant consequences. HTTP Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks Consider your typical online banking session: you type “www.mybank.com” into the address bar, hit enter, and wait for the site to load. When it shows up, you enter your password, do your banking, then log out. This process is more-or-less automatic for many people, and the subtleties of the process disappear in the background. More specifically, these are the steps for logging into the bank’s site: You type “www.mybank.com” into the address bar and hit enter
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