(C) Although the term originally referred to making a mechanical connection to an electrical conductor that links two nodes, it is now used to refer to reading information from any sort of medium used for a link or even directly from a node, such as gateway or subnetwork switch.

(C) "Active wiretapping" attempts to alter the data or otherwise affect the flow; "passive wiretapping" only attempts to observe the flow and gain knowledge of information it contains. (See: active attack, end-to-end encryption, passive attack.)

Back to the Security Dictionary