Which statement best describes the difference between a spoofing attack and a man-in-the-middle attack?

• A. A spoofing attack impersonates another device or user, while a man-in-the-middle attack intercepts and alters communication between two parties.
• B. A spoofing attack always targets passwords; a man-in-the-middle attack targets physical devices.
• C. Both are the same; there is no difference.
• D. Spoofing only occurs in email; MITM only occurs in web traffic.

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is the difference between pretending to be someone or something else and actually sitting between two communicating parties to control their exchange. Spoofing is about identity deception—the attacker makes a system or user believe they are someone else, such as forging an IP address, a sender, or a device so the target accepts data or access they shouldn’t. A man-in-the-middle attack, by contrast, places the attacker in the middle of a communication channel, so messages from both ends go through the attacker who can eavesdrop, alter, or inject data while the parties think they’re talking directly to each other. So spoofing deals with fooling the other party about who is contacting them, while MITM deals with controlling the conversation path itself.

That’s why the other statements don’t fit: spoofing isn’t limited to passwords or to emails, and MITM isn’t limited to web traffic. They describe different objectives—identity deception versus interception and possible manipulation of a conversation.