What type of attack involves an attacker associating their MAC address with someone else's IP address to intercept traffic?

The attack involving an attacker associating their MAC address with someone else's IP address to intercept traffic is known as ARP cache poisoning. This attack exploits the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), which is used to map IP addresses to MAC addresses within a local area network (LAN).

In this scenario, the attacker sends forged ARP messages to the network, resulting in the network devices updating their ARP tables to associate the attacker's MAC address with the IP address of a legitimate device, such as a router or another computer. Consequently, any traffic intended for the legitimate device is redirected to the attacker's device instead. This allows the attacker to intercept, modify, or even block the communication between the two endpoints, leading to various malicious outcomes, such as data theft or session hijacking.

Understanding ARP cache poisoning is critical for establishing effective security measures in network environments, including the implementing of static ARP entries, using ARP monitoring tools, and employing secure network configurations to help prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.