In cybersecurity, ‘spoofing’ is when Hackers pretend to be someone or something else to win a person’s trust. The motivation is usually to gain access to systems, steal data, steal money, or spread malware.

Spoofing is a broad term for the type of behavior that involves a cybercriminal aka “hacker” masquerading as a trusted entity or device to get you to do something beneficial to the hacker and detrimental to you. Any time an online scammer disguises their identity as something else, it’s spoofing.

Spoofing attacks usually involve an element of social engineering, where hackers psychologically manipulate their victims by playing on human vulnerabilities such as fear, greed, or lack of technical knowledge.

A successful spoofing attack can have serious consequences – including stealing personal or company information, harvesting credentials for use in further attacks, spreading malware, gaining unauthorized network access, or bypassing access controls. For businesses, spoofing attacks can sometimes lead to ransomware attacks or damaging and costly data breaches.

There are many different types of spoofing attacks – the more straightforward ones relate to emails, websites, and phone calls. The more complex technical attacks involve IP addresses, Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), and Domain Name System (DNS) servers.

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