Spoofing is a type of cyber-scam where an attacker pretends to be someone else in order to gain a victim’s trust.
Steps in the spoofing process
- Identity concealment: the attacker masks their real identity
- Imitation: A legitimate or trusted source (a bank, a known company, a colleague) is imitated
- Trust Exploitation: The attacker takes advantage of the inherent trust we have in certain communications or systems
- By appearing as a trusted source, the attacker can bypass certain security measures
- Malicious Objectives: The end goal is always negative: data theft, fraud, malware distribution, DDoS attacks.