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An attacker silently positions himself between a customer's device and a bank's server on an unsecured public Wi-Fi network, reading and possibly altering the data exchanged. Which attack is this, and which measure best counters it?

This is a man-in-the-middle attack, where the attacker intercepts and may alter communication between two parties. The best countermeasure is strong encryption such as TLS with certificate validation, so intercepted data cannot be read or modified undetected, especially on unsecured public Wi-Fi.

AMan-in-the-middle attack; end-to-end encryption such as TLS with certificate validationCorrect
BSmishing; blocking all SMS messages
CZero-day exploit; installing a printer driver
DDictionary attack; lengthening the screen saver timeout

Explanation

Intercepting communication between two parties without their knowledge is a man-in-the-middle attack. Encrypted channels such as TLS with proper certificate validation prevent the attacker from reading or tampering usefully. The other pairings mismatch the attack and the control.

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