-: Spoofing. Spoofing is a category of network attacks
that occur when an attacker masquerades
as another person by falsifying their identity.
Just like a person uses a mask
to cover up their face to hide their true identity,
spoofing is the electronic equivalent.
We have briefly discussed spoofing a few times already,
such as in the case of the DNS amplification attack
when attempting a distributed denial of service
by spoofing the IP address of the victim server
when making that request.
Or we've talked about it before
when we talked about phishing,
where an attacker is trying to get you
to click on a link in an email
by falsifying their identity to trick you
into clicking that link thinking that it's trusted.
Anything that identifies a user or system
can be spoofed, though.
For example, each network interface card
has a unique MAC address that's assigned to it,
but MAC spoofing allows the attacker
to change their MAC address to pretend
that they're using a different device.
IP addresses are also commonly used to identify a system,
but with IP spoofing, the attacker can use
somebody else's IP address as part of their attacks.
So, how do we prevent spoofing
from being effectively used against our systems?
Well, the best way is to use proper authentication,
preferably multi-factor.
Now, when you use proper authentication,
you're going to be able to identify a system
or user more accurately and prevent the spoofing.
If you can do this, you're going to be able
to detect and stop spoofing quite easily.