Older than encryption? Encryption has existed since before the Roman empire.
> It refers to literally a person intercepting your message before (or instead of) it reaching the intended audience.
Every time somebody has pointed that out they have extracted that definition from the term opposed to referencing the term from a definition. It is similar to answering a question with only a restatement of the question.
MitM attacks have been around far longer than transport/network layer encryption has been commonly deployed, is what parent means. These days it's more commonly used to defeat encryption but there's plenty of attacks that don't really need it (e.g. ARP spoofing, etc etc)
> It refers to literally a person intercepting your message before (or instead of) it reaching the intended audience.
Every time somebody has pointed that out they have extracted that definition from the term opposed to referencing the term from a definition. It is similar to answering a question with only a restatement of the question.