An attacker intercepts an established connection between two communicating parties by using spoofed packets and then pretends to be one of those parties.

An attacker intercepts an established connection between two communicating parties by using spoofed packets and then pretends to be one of those parties.

• A. TCP/IP hijacking
• B. RST hijacking
• C. DroidSheep
• D. Session Donation Attack

Answer: (A)

This is TCP/IP hijacking—the attacker takes over an already established TCP session by spoofing packets and impersonating one of the endpoints. In a live TCP connection, both sides track sequence and acknowledgement numbers. If an attacker can forge packets that look like they come from one party and carry the correct sequence numbers, they can inject data, alter the conversation, or even take full control of the session while the other party remains unaware. The attacker effectively positions themselves in the middle and can relay traffic to keep the connection alive, reading or modifying the data as it passes. This differs from other options in that those either terminate the connection (RST hijacking) or operate at a different layer or method (DroidSheep targets application-layer session cookies on wireless networks, and a Session Donation Attack describes a different, less common tactic). The essence here is seizing an active TCP conversation by crafting believable forged packets to impersonate a party.

This is TCP/IP hijacking—the attacker takes over an already established TCP session by spoofing packets and impersonating one of the endpoints. In a live TCP connection, both sides track sequence and acknowledgement numbers. If an attacker can forge packets that look like they come from one party and carry the correct sequence numbers, they can inject data, alter the conversation, or even take full control of the session while the other party remains unaware. The attacker effectively positions themselves in the middle and can relay traffic to keep the connection alive, reading or modifying the data as it passes.

This differs from other options in that those either terminate the connection (RST hijacking) or operate at a different layer or method (DroidSheep targets application-layer session cookies on wireless networks, and a Session Donation Attack describes a different, less common tactic). The essence here is seizing an active TCP conversation by crafting believable forged packets to impersonate a party.