Spoofing attacks are unfortunately common in the digital world we live in. Often paired with the social engineering tactics of phishing, a spoofing attack can spell disaster for your organization. With successful spoofing attacks, firms stand to lose anything from highly sensitive business data, reputation, and much more. With up to 30,000 spoofing attacks occurring each day, businesses and organizations alike need to be highly vigilant.
The best way to properly defend against spoofing attacks is to first understand what a spoofing attack is, and how they work. This article will go into detail answering these questions and providing tips on protecting your organization from spoofers.
What is a spoofing attack?
The word “spoofing” means to imitate something, whether for comedy or as a trick. In the world of cybersecurity, spoofing has an almost exclusively sinister meaning. It refers to the act of stealing a person’s or entity's identity.
A spoofing attack is an act of stealing an identity and using it to extract some form of personal gain. There are many different ways for a spoofing attack to be carried out. Attackers may choose to spoof a trusted email address, create a spoofed website, fake caller IDs, and much more. Ultimately, the goal of the attacker is to use the legitimacy and trust associated with the stolen identity to scam the unsuspecting victim. They may ask them to enter passwords or PINs, transfer money, or worse.
Fortunately, there are always ways to check for spoofing. However, this requires a keen eye, extra precaution, and knowledge of different kinds of spoofing attacks.
How does a spoofing attack work?
A spoofing attack may come in a multitude of forms. The underlying connection between them all is the basis of identity theft and the attacker masquerading as a person or identity they are not. While many spoofing attacks rely on software that hides or replaces the identifier in communication channels, this is not the only type of spoofing we see.
What are the different types of spoofing attacks?
Email spoofing
Email spoofing is when the attacker sends emails pretending to be a person or organization they are not. Emails are often designed to play the part in terms of design, messaging, and more. They exploit the trust that the recipient may have with the spoofed identity to get them to click on a malicious link, send sensitive information, or some other action. Email spoofing attack is very commonly used in conjunction with phishing attacks.
Attackers can do this in a couple of different ways. The simpler and easier-to-spot method is to change a letter or number in the email address or email domain to make a false address appear like the real one at first glance.
For example, our tech support email “Tech.Support@sangfor.com” could be spoofed as “Tech.Support@sangfor.com.hk”
Alternatively, email spoofers can choose to disguise the email sender field. This will make it appear like it has been sent from a completely legitimate sender until closer inspection.
Website spoofing
Website spoofing refers to the act of creating a near-identical clone website to trick and scam people. The malicious website will look and navigate in the same way as the real website. However, when visitors try to log in their username and password are recorded allowing the hacker to access the account on a legitimate website.
Spoofed websites are often paired with email spoofing to get people on the website in the first place. Many people will not carefully check the URL of the website, which will be designed to look extremely similar to the legitimate website, and suspect nothing wrong until their details have been stolen.
Caller ID spoofing
Caller ID spoofing is when the number visible on the receiver’s display is disguised to look similar to a trusted number. This could be a number with recognizable local area codes or otherwise familiar to the victim.
Once the call is answered, the attacker will attempt to scam the receiver in one of several ways. They may pretend to be someone from a trusted organization and ask for personal information, money, or other fraudulent scams.
Text/SMS spoofing
Sometimes, hackers utilize text or SMS spoofing techniques to target their victims. In doing so, they will change their sender ID to impersonate someone or an organization they may know and trust. This often involves alphanumeric sender IDs, which allow the use of letters instead of numbers. The attacker may masquerade as a company such as PayPal, your local bank, or an e-Commerce website you have recently purchased from.
Many SMS spoofing attacks use social engineering tactics and ask the victim to click on a link in the message that may lead to a spoofed website. This is where the victim’s personal information is stolen.
DNS server spoofing
A Domain Name Server (DNS) is where readable URLs are translated into IP addresses which are used to locate and direct you to different websites and webpages. Attackers hack or spoof the DNS server and divert traffic to where they want. Rather than reaching the legitimate destination, users may end up at a fraudulent website which is often used to record usernames, passwords, and other sensitive information. This is called a DNS server compromise.
DNS server spoofing may also be devised as a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack, whereby traffic is intercepted and recorded before being redirected to the intended destination. In MitM attacks, the user may be completely unaware.
IP spoofing
An IP address is a unique string of numbers used to identify a device connected to a network. IP spoofing is the act of modifying an IP address to disguise the sender’s true identity. Without knowledge of the sender’s real address, IP spoofing makes cyber attacks like DDoS attacks possible. In cases such as these, the attacker will overload the victim’s computer with traffic while protecting the origin from being blocked or halted. Read more about DDoS attacks and the dangers they pose to organizations.
Deepfake facial spoofing
Deepfaking is when a real video with a person’s face is altered to look like someone else. This is perhaps one of the most blatant acts of spoofing as a person’s face is stolen. Recently, technology has evolved and scammers have started to deepfake someone's identity during live video calls. In one case, for example, the mayor of Kyiv was deepfaked and held conference calls with several European politicians. The dangers of deepfake facial spoofing are becoming more real every day. Hackers will attempt to use their disguised identity for a range of malicious motives, putting organizations at risk.
ARP spoofing
An Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) connects dynamic IP addresses to static MAC addresses that are tied to physical machines. ARP is crucial for networks to be able to send communications between two or more machines. ARP spoofing is a type of man-in-the-middle attack whereby the attacker inserts themselves between the sender and receiver by compromising the ARP. Once in this position, they are able to read and effectively spy on communications.
What is the difference between spoofing and phishing?
Spoofing and phishing are two terms often confused with each other, likely because many phishing attacks involve spoofing.
The ultimate goal of spoofing, as discussed above, is to steal an identity for malicious purposes. Phishing, on the other hand, is the act of sending fraudulent emails disguised as legitimate ones to scam a victim. This may involve information theft, financial fraud, or network breaches. Read more about phishing attacks.
Spoofing itself is not fraud, as nothing needs to be stolen other than the identity for it to be considered a spoof. Phishing, in contrast, is inherently fraudulent as the goal is to get sensitive information.
How is spoofing used in phishing attacks?
Spoofing attacks are commonly paired with the social engineering mechanics of phishing to trick victims. This is because phishing attacks are much more effective and believable when identities are spoofed. Victims are more likely to fall victim to fraudulent emails if they believe they are being sent by their bank, boss, or someone they know. This is the idea behind spear phishing attacks.
How to protect your business from spoofing attacks
From what we have discussed above, it is clear that spoofing attacks are both diverse and widespread. But, even though there are so many different facets of an organization for hackers to spoof, there are ways to protect against these attacks.
Steps you can take to prevent spoofing attacks
- Always check the sender’s address on any communication channel. As mentioned above, spoofing emails often use addresses meant to look like the real ones. It will pay dividends in the long run to double-check the address of an email you have received. After all, it only takes one unnoticed “l” to be replaced by an “I”, or vice versa, for a spoofing attack to work.
- Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments in emails. Unless you can verify the sender, never click on links or download attachments in emails. It remains a good rule of thumb to simply find the URL of a linked website through safer alternate means than simply clicking a URL. Don’t forget that a common and simple trick is to paste a real URL in an email, but have it hyperlinked to a spoofed website instead. Without closer inspection, nothing seems amiss.
- Utilize the spam filter your email provider offers. All major email providers like Gmail and Outlook provide spam filters. While some spoofing emails will get through, these filters do a great job of filtering out the vast majority. In fact, you would be surprised at how many spoofing emails you might find in your spam inbox.
- Confirm suspicious requests before doing anything. If something sounds suspicious, it never hurts to confirm the request beforehand. For example, if you have received a request from your superior to transfer funds to an account unknown to you, simply contact them to confirm the transfer.
- Pay attention to typos, grammatical errors, and more. Spoofing attacks and phishing emails are almost always poorly written. Attackers are known for their technical ingenuity and creativeness, but not necessarily their proofreading or writing skills. Frequent typos, weird formatting, and more are common indicators of a scam.
- Check the URL of websites you are about to log into. Legitimate websites will have an HTTPS protocol. Many spoofed websites may only have a more insecure HTTP protocol.
Cyber security solutions
A range of cyber security solutions from Sangfor can help identify a spoofing attack before they happen and help prevent further damage if someone has fallen victim. Here are some solutions which can help protect your organization from spoofing attacks and much more:
- Sangfor NGAF - Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is a next-generation AI-powered firewall that can inspect the legitimacy of IPs, URLs, and files in real-time. This prevents the vast majority of spoofing attacks from even having a chance at success.
- Sangfor Endpoint Secure (EDR) is industry-leading endpoint security that can help detect and eliminate any viruses or worms that may have been installed from spoofed websites, for example.
- Sangfor Cyber Command (NDR) is network detection and response technology powered by AI and machine learning. It is capable of analyzing traffic for abnormal behavior that might be consistent with, for example, a man-in-the-middle attack.
Protect your organization with Sangfor
Prevention is the best form of defense. Team up with Sangfor today and safeguard your organization from the threats of the digital world.
