Cisco R&S: How "Man In The Middle Attacks" Happen

In doing some research about a particular problem I came across for a client, I read through a good Cisco document about how man in the middle attacks occur.  I thought this would be a interesting read for you as well, if you are interested in that sort of thing.  I copied and pasted this directly from the following document: Cisco document

Figure 34-1 ARP Cache Poisoning

Hosts HA, HB, and HC are connected to the switch on interfaces A, B and C, all of which are on the same subnet. Their IP and MAC addresses are shown in parentheses; for example, Host HA uses IP address IA and MAC address MA. When HA needs to communicate to HB at the IP Layer, HA broadcasts an ARP request for the MAC address associated with IB. As soon as HB receives the ARP request, the ARP cache on HB is populated with an ARP binding for a host with the IP address IA and a MAC address MA; for example, IP address IA is bound to MAC address MA. When HB responds, the ARP cache on HA is populated with a binding for a host with the IP address IB and a MAC address MB.

Host HC can "poison" the ARP caches of HA and HB by broadcasting forged ARP responses with bindings for a host with an IP address of IA (or IB) and a MAC address of MC. Hosts with poisoned ARP caches use the MAC address MC as the destination MAC address for traffic intended for IA or IB. This means that HC intercepts that traffic. Because HC knows the true MAC addresses associated with IA and IB, HC can forward the intercepted traffic to those hosts using the correct MAC address as the destination. HC has inserted itself into the traffic stream from HA to HB, the classic "man in the middle" attack.