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Explain a man-in-the-middle attack as you would to a capable student, in 3-4 sentences.

A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack occurs when an attacker secretly positions themselves between two parties who think they're communicating directly with each other. The attacker can intercept, read, and even modify the messages passing between the two victims without either party knowing. For example, imagine you're trying to send your credit card information to a shopping website, but an attacker intercepts it, reads your card number, and then forwards it to the actual website—you and the website complete the transaction normally, never realizing someone was listening in. These attacks are particularly dangerous on unsecured public Wi-Fi networks where traffic isn't encrypted.