{"id":4454,"date":"2011-08-11T11:22:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T11:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/spoofing\/"},"modified":"2024-06-25T11:57:40","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T11:57:40","slug":"spoofing","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/5398\/spoofing","title":{"rendered":"Spoofing"},"content":{"rendered":"
The definition of spoofing is a type of scam where a hacker<\/a> forges their identity to imitate a legitimate business or reliable source. In a spoofing scam, the cybercriminal<\/a> will attempt to trick the victim into handing over personal information, such as account or payment details, so they can steal it to commit cybercrime<\/a>.<\/p>\n Threat actors<\/a> can disguise their identities in a number of ways, including forging their email<\/a>, website<\/a>, IP address<\/a>, caller ID<\/a>, or GPS<\/a> location.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div>\n In a spoofing scam, the hacker aims to disguise their identity to try and trick a victim into handing over personal information. Typically, this is done by spoofing an email header, website, or caller ID.<\/p>\n Spoofing, in a cybersecurity context, is often used to enable social engineering<\/a> and phishing scams<\/a>. In a common phishing scam, a fraudster may spoof their email header to obfuscate who sent the email.<\/p>\n They could do this by imitating a reputable organization, such as Microsoft Office 365<\/a> customer support, and then trying to persuade the user to click on a malicious link or attachment.<\/p>\n In such a scam, clicking on the link could redirect the user to a spoofed website that imitates the Microsoft Office 365 login portal, trying to trick the user into handing over their username and password. Likewise, clicking on the attachment could download malware<\/a> to the user’s device<\/a>.<\/p>\n As mentioned above, spoofing attacks can come in all different shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n Some of the most common types of spoofing attacks include:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Key Takeaways<\/span><\/h2>\n
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How Spoofing Works<\/span><\/h2>\n
Types of Spoofing<\/span><\/h2>\n
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