Spoofing

How it is used

Used with many objects: email spoofing, caller ID spoofing, domain spoofing, ARP spoofing. The verb is 'spoof', and a spoofed email is one with a forged sender. Email protections such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC are designed against sender spoofing.

Example sentences

1. The invoice email used spoofing to look as if it came from our CEO.

2. Since we enforced DMARC, spoofing of our domain has dropped sharply.

Common collocations

• email spoofing
• spoofed sender
• caller ID spoofing
• domain spoofing
• DMARC policy

Related terms

• phishingA trick in which attackers send fake emails, messages or websites that look trustworthy, hoping people will click a link, open a file or reveal their passwords.
• social engineeringManipulating people, rather than breaking technology, to make them reveal information, give access or take an action that helps an attacker.
• man-in-the-middle attackAn attack in which someone secretly places themselves between two communicating parties so that they can read or change the traffic passing between them.
• authenticationThe process of checking that a user, device or system really is who or what it claims to be, for example with a password, a code or a fingerprint.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• spoofing · Software Engineering

More terms: Threats and Attacks

• threat
• exploit
• compromise
• DDoS
• attack surface
• brute-force attack
• privilege escalation
• lateral movement
• SQL injection
• cross-site scripting
• threat actor