What is spoofing?

Answer 1

In spoofing, the attacker tries to obfuscate the actual origins of a message. In the context of network security, a spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate advantage. This is often accomplished by changing the header on the message to inject a false origin address or to try to make an application display a false origin address. Sometimes an attacker may send a message with a series of false routing hops prior to their own address and then just pull in the message as it comes to them (and not forward it).

Phishing attacks may employ a variation on spoofing to deceive a user into believing that a message came from a legitimate source or that the site they are about to visit is actually the legitimate site for a legitimate business. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is sometimes referred to as "webpage spoofing". The miscreant/criminal attacker reproduces the appearance and feel of a legitimate site in order to trick the victim into entering sensitive data. The web address for the phishing site may closely resemble the legitimate site or it may include the address of the legitimate site but include code in the address to reroute the traffic to the false website.

To summarize - spoofing seeks to obscure the source of a message while phishing seeks to obscure the destination that the user is going to, so a "phishing and spoofing attack" would combine these two.

Answer 2

Web spoofing is a from of a cyber attack that allows someone to watch and change all web pages coming in and out of a victims machine. This also allows that person to see all information typed or watched on the screen. Spouses use programs like this to catch their partner cheating. Parents often use programs like this to check up on their children's online activities.

Answer 3

DNS spoofing (or DNS cache poisoning) is a computer hacking attack, whereby data is introduced into a Domain Name System (DNS) name server's cache database, causing the name server to return an incorrect IP address, diverting traffic to another computer (often the attacker's).

Answer 4

Definition of spoof (n)

Bing Dictionary

spoof

[ spoof ]

1. hoax: a good-humored hoax
2. amusing satire: a light amusing satire
3. fraudulent spam e-mail: a method of sending e-mail using a false name or e-mail address to make it appear that the e-mail comes from somebody other than the true sender

Answer 5

The term 'spoofing' refers to imitating something while exaggerating its most characteristic features to obtain a comedic effect. The term 'spoofing' is also synonymous to the word 'hoax' and 'joke'.

Answer 6

A spoof is a parody, usually satirical. For example, the SNL "newscast" is a spoof of the network news programs.