Eavesdropping is the interception of communication between two entities by an unauthorized third party. The simplest form of eavesdropping is described below:
Some of the things that hackers can achieve by eavesdropping are as follows:
To get unauthorized access to your bank account and make transactions.
To steal someone's sensitive information and use it to blackmail them.
Stealing passwords of servers in a data center and gaining access to steal users' data
Eavesdropping attacks are of two types, which are as follows:
Passive: In a passive eavesdropping attack, the attacker only gathers intel/information on its target by just reading the packets.
Active: In an active eavesdropping attack, the attacker not only reads but also injects blocks and modifies the packets. The most common type of this attack is the Man-in-the-middle attack.
Suppose you are sending a message to your friend Alice. Every message is sent to the recipient in the form of packets. Each packet has its sender's IP address, recipient's IP address, and port number. Thus, if someone is recording all the packets sent from your computer to Alice's computer, they can also intercept the packet containing your message, and then they will have access to your message to Alice.
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