With all the talk of Lenovo and Superfish in the press, now seems a good time to mention an update which is personal to me on the topic of Man in The Middle attacks.
People have asked me how widespread the man in the middle attempts made my by ISP actually are. Well thankfully the manufacturer of the equipment used has put out a press statement around their current “subscriber reach” which you can read in full here. The important paragraph for us is this:
New-customer wins along with existing-customer expansions for 2014 resulted in a substantial increase in the aggregate subscriber reach across all PerfTech’s ISP customers. Previously at roughly 15 million subscribers, that total climbed to approximately 19.5 million for 2014, a gain of 30%.
If these figures are to be believed, that’s 19.5 million subscribers. By my understanding a subscriber is a connection (e.g. one cable or DSL line), not a single device so the total user count is probably significantly higher.