Dear @Steve, thank you for another highly informative episode as always.
It seems you're under the impression that the reason for gender-inclusive alternatives to "man-in-the-middle attack" is about men. That's the opposite of my understanding.
You see, the term "man-in-the-middle" implies that the attacker is male, thereby excluding females and non-binary folks. Similarly, "evil maid attack" reinforces the gender stereotype of female domestic workers, even though the term was coined by a female security researcher.
I'm going to take a wild guess that the vast majority of Security Now listeners are male, and thus have never experienced workplace sexual harassment, unconscious bias, and other forms of discrimination that women, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities have to go through on a daily basis. While the use of inclusive language may appear trivial or even annoying to us men, it is instrumental in the fight against inequality in tech.
The notes section of man-in-the-middle attack's Wikipedia entry has a list of commonly used alternatives. My favorite is "monster-in-the-middle". And the best alternative to "evil maid attack" I've seen so far is "unauthorized device tampering".
For those who wish to learn more, I found this blog post titled Inclusive Language in Tech: An Introduction.
It seems you're under the impression that the reason for gender-inclusive alternatives to "man-in-the-middle attack" is about men. That's the opposite of my understanding.
You see, the term "man-in-the-middle" implies that the attacker is male, thereby excluding females and non-binary folks. Similarly, "evil maid attack" reinforces the gender stereotype of female domestic workers, even though the term was coined by a female security researcher.
I'm going to take a wild guess that the vast majority of Security Now listeners are male, and thus have never experienced workplace sexual harassment, unconscious bias, and other forms of discrimination that women, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities have to go through on a daily basis. While the use of inclusive language may appear trivial or even annoying to us men, it is instrumental in the fight against inequality in tech.
The notes section of man-in-the-middle attack's Wikipedia entry has a list of commonly used alternatives. My favorite is "monster-in-the-middle". And the best alternative to "evil maid attack" I've seen so far is "unauthorized device tampering".
For those who wish to learn more, I found this blog post titled Inclusive Language in Tech: An Introduction.
