5 ms·

"Man in the middle" is not only an established concept it also is self-explanatory. Furthermore calling intercepters "monsters" is also a highly insensitive th

"Man in the middle" is not only an established concept it also is self-explanatory. Furthermore calling intercepters "monsters" is also a highly insensitive thing to do, if we're going to play the virtue signaling card. All this quixotism towards grammar and language is very stupid and pointless.

jraph 7y ago
> "Man in the middle" is not only an established concept it also is self-explanatory. Being comprehensible and established does not make it "good" (sure, this is a relative notion). I get your point of view about calling the interceptors "monster", but we are calling the whole process an "attack", this could already be considered a judgment call with this reasoning. Monster are not necessarily evil though. A myth that Monsters, Inc is actively trying to debunk :-) > All this quixotism towards grammar and language is very stupid and pointless. Many non-ignorant people think differently, so you need to argue here. Saying they are doing a stupid and pointless thing will not convince them.
- rumanator 7y ago
  Your attempt to force your personal blend of newspeak onto the world has no place in tech nor in this discussion. Please leave your gender politics activism out of an interesting technical discussion that affects us all. Besides being pointless and stupid, it only adds noise to the debate.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    Discussions should get more civil over time, not less. GP never mentions gender in their post, but in terms of politics, it seems to me that this entire thread is a political conversation. It's certainly not technical -- a technical person would not care about whether someone used the term "monster" or "man", since: a) it changes literally nothing about the technical details of the attack. b) everyone understands what both terms are referring to. The only reason why it makes sense for anybody at all to advocate for switching to "monster" or to advocate against switching to "monster" is because they're interested in the politics behind that switch. From a technical point of view, if using the word "monster" makes some people happy, then why is it a problem for them to do so? My computer isn't going to stop working because of it ;) If it makes someone feel more accepted, and it isn't causing any confusion, then I'm all for it.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mises 7y ago
      There is a technical reason. I may know, but Google does not. I look up "Man in the Middle" and get many years worth of useful info. I look up "Monster in the Middle", and here's what I get: one result about a cloudflare project, one bodybuilding.com post, one disney wiki post, and several you tube videos about "HuggleMonsters". After those is this discussion. Does that sound like a really good term to use? This looks like some one at cloud flare got pc and used the term, then this guy got in on it. I see no reason to let some company decide what's proper; I'd rather go for decades of security and development expertise.
      - jraph 7y ago
        If the expression spreads, search engines will start showing relevant results. If it does not spread, then we are facing a non-issue.
        danShumway 7y ago
        To add to this, search engines already need to correlate "MITM" and "Man in the Middle". But we don't see anyone here arguing that the expanded form should be preferred to make searching between those two forms easier. Correlating terms turns out to be a pretty easy problem. It's overlapping terms like "Mongoose (Animal)" and "Mongoose (Database)" that are hard.
    - pelasaco 7y ago
      well what is more accurate? A man in the middle or a monster in the middle? Last computer conference that I visited, there were a lot of Men, some women but no monsters.. The same Pattern i observed in the last 15 years. So I think Man in the Middle is pretty much more accurate.

jraph 7y ago

> "Man in the middle" is not only an established concept it also is self-explanatory. Being comprehensible and established does not make it "good" (sure, this is a relative notion). I get your point of view about calling the interceptors "monster", but we are calling the whole process an "attack", this could already be considered a judgment call with this reasoning. Monster are not necessarily evil though. A myth that Monsters, Inc is actively trying to debunk :-) > All this quixotism towards grammar and language is very stupid and pointless. Many non-ignorant people think differently, so you need to argue here. Saying they are doing a stupid and pointless thing will not convince them.

rumanator 7y ago
Your attempt to force your personal blend of newspeak onto the world has no place in tech nor in this discussion. Please leave your gender politics activism out of an interesting technical discussion that affects us all. Besides being pointless and stupid, it only adds noise to the debate.
- danShumway 7y ago
  Discussions should get more civil over time, not less. GP never mentions gender in their post, but in terms of politics, it seems to me that this entire thread is a political conversation. It's certainly not technical -- a technical person would not care about whether someone used the term "monster" or "man", since: a) it changes literally nothing about the technical details of the attack. b) everyone understands what both terms are referring to. The only reason why it makes sense for anybody at all to advocate for switching to "monster" or to advocate against switching to "monster" is because they're interested in the politics behind that switch. From a technical point of view, if using the word "monster" makes some people happy, then why is it a problem for them to do so? My computer isn't going to stop working because of it ;) If it makes someone feel more accepted, and it isn't causing any confusion, then I'm all for it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mises 7y ago
    There is a technical reason. I may know, but Google does not. I look up "Man in the Middle" and get many years worth of useful info. I look up "Monster in the Middle", and here's what I get: one result about a cloudflare project, one bodybuilding.com post, one disney wiki post, and several you tube videos about "HuggleMonsters". After those is this discussion. Does that sound like a really good term to use? This looks like some one at cloud flare got pc and used the term, then this guy got in on it. I see no reason to let some company decide what's proper; I'd rather go for decades of security and development expertise.
    - jraph 7y ago
      If the expression spreads, search engines will start showing relevant results. If it does not spread, then we are facing a non-issue.
      - danShumway 7y ago
        To add to this, search engines already need to correlate "MITM" and "Man in the Middle". But we don't see anyone here arguing that the expanded form should be preferred to make searching between those two forms easier. Correlating terms turns out to be a pretty easy problem. It's overlapping terms like "Mongoose (Animal)" and "Mongoose (Database)" that are hard.
  - pelasaco 7y ago
    well what is more accurate? A man in the middle or a monster in the middle? Last computer conference that I visited, there were a lot of Men, some women but no monsters.. The same Pattern i observed in the last 15 years. So I think Man in the Middle is pretty much more accurate.