[sasasassy]

I find it very annoying that the authors thought it would be cute to use another full name for MITM.

[blowski]

My wild unfounded guess: they’re trying to make it gender-neutral.

[big_chungus]

Pretty much. Link to probably the first article I saw using it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20673409

> It’s the same thing, recognizing that the MITM is neither male, nor human at all.

I don't see why this is important for a technical term. People hear the term as a slug, a group of words, not as discrete ones. No one actually pictures a man or anything else in the middle upon hearing the term. The difference is that the purpose of language is to communicate with others, and everyone understands man in the middle. I look up the "alternative" and get more results for "Henry the Hugglemonster" than I do for network traffic interception.

[Hackbraten]

> No one actually pictures a man or anything else in the middle upon hearing the term.

Thanks, I’ve always wanted someone to mansplain to me how I hear terms and what I picture while I hear them.

[blowski]

I can see both sides of the argument here, but don't really have an opinion. Perhaps if I weren't a middle-aged, middle-class, white male in a Western country, I'd feel more strongly about it. As it is, I do feel a bit of "social justice fatigue" on issues like this.