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If you're a regular reader of Mysterium VPN's blog posts, you're familiar with the sad fact that hackers and other malicious actors are feverishly working to come up with new ways to steal data, hurt you, or gain unauthorized access to your sensitive information.
Fear not, dear reader. The hackers may be smart, but we're smarter. Although the phrase "ignorance is bliss" may be true when it comes to other people's opinions of you, it very much doesn't work in the context of cyber threats.
That's why we've written this article -- we'll tell you about how spoofing attacks work, how attackers manipulate you, and how you can protect yourself online. Let's get going!
Spoofing Explained
Despite their ridiculous name, spoofing attacks shouldn't be taken as a joke. So, what is spoofing in cyber security? Put simply, spoofing means that bad people, hackers, and scammers alike pretend to be a legitimate website or legitimate service providers, such as your bank or local delivery service.
Why on earth would they do that? With each spoofing attempt, hackers try to gain access to systems, steal money, spread malware, or obtain sensitive data for their own evil needs. These data breaches are their end goal.
Let us teach you how to prevent yourself from accidentally divulging confidential information.
What Is Spoofing?
Spoofing is essentially an umbrella term for the type of behavior when cybercriminals act like a known and trusted entity or device to get you to do something beneficial to the hacker — and, in turn, harmful to you. Any time an online scammer disguises their identity as something else, it becomes spoofing.
Spoofing actually applies to a range of communication channels and can involve different levels of technical complexity. We'll get to that in a second.
Spoofing attacks usually involve an element of social engineering. Scammers psychologically manipulate you, their victim, by playing on human vulnerabilities such as fear, greed, or an unfortunate lack of technical knowledge.
How Spoofing Attacks Work
Spoofing attacks are dependent on two aspects -- the actual spoof (for example, spoofed emails) and an element of social engineering, which motivates you to take action towards engaging with that fake email.
For instance, a spoofer (the hacker who is doing the spoofing) sends you a spoofed email that looks like it came straight from your coworker, asking you to send them a bit of money and giving you some really convincing reasons for doing so.
These people are keenly aware of which human strings they should pull in order to reach their goal (in this case, performing a fraudulent money transfer) of stealing money, information, or unauthorized access to certain websites.
Types of Spoofing Attacks
Based on their technical difficulty, there are many different types of spoofing attacks.
The more straightforward ones include emails, websites, and phone calls. Spoofing attacks that require more technical knowledge involve IP addresses, Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), and Domain Name System (DNS) servers. We explore the most common spoofing examples below.
Phone/Caller ID Spoofing
Caller ID spoofing, which is also sometimes called phone spoofing, happens when bad guys deliberately falsify the information sent to your caller ID to disguise their identity.
Why would they do this? Because they know you're more likely to pick up your phone if you think it is a local number calling instead of a spoofed phone number you don't recognize.
Caller ID spoofing uses VoIP (voice-over internet protocol), which allows scammers to create a phone number and caller ID of their choice.
Once people answer the call, the scammers use these spoofed communications to try and obtain sensitive information for fraudulent purposes.
Email Spoofing
Email spoofing is arguably the most common type of spoofing.
It occurs when the sender (the bad guy/gal) fakes email headers so that client software (your email account) displays the fraudulent sender address, like that of your bank. However, it's a spoofed email address.
And let's be honest: how closely do you inspect the email address of the sender? Unless you do so, you assume that the forged sender (your bank) has sent you an email message. Because if it’s a name you know and trust, you're more likely to trust what it has to say.
The goal of email spoofing is to ask for money transfers or permission to access a system. Also, they can sometimes contain attachments with malware downloads like Trojans or viruses. Often, the malware is designed to go beyond infecting your computer and spread to your entire network.
IP Address Spoofing
IP address spoofing is an attacker working to gain unauthorized access to your systems by sending messages with a fake or spoofed IP (internet protocol) address to make it look like the message came from a trusted source, such as one on the same local network.
Cybercriminals and hackers go about this by taking a legitimate host's IP address and modifying the packet headers sent from their own system to make them appear to be from the original, trusted computer and source IP address.
Catching IP spoofing attacks early is incredibly important because they often come as part of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which can take down an entire network. Yikes!
GPS Spoofing Attacks
GPS spoofing happens once a GPS receiver is tricked into broadcasting fake signals that look like real ones. This means that the spoofers are pretending to be in one location while actually being somewhere else entirely.
Fraudsters can use this to hack a car's GPS and send you to the wrong place. On a much bigger scale, GPS spoofing can result in session hijacking for commercial ships or aircraft.
Many mobile apps rely on location data from smartphones – these can be targets for this kind of spoofing attack.
Domain Name System (DNS) Spoofing Attacks
First things first, what is a domain name system (DNS)?
The domain name system (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet protocol (IP) networks.
Essentially, the DNS is used to keep track of, catalog, and regulate websites all over the world.
Domain name system (DNS) spoofing is a type of cyberattack that exploits DNS server vulnerabilities to divert your network traffic away from legitimate servers towards fake, spoofed websites.
Spoofers achieve this by replacing the IP addresses stored in the DNS server with the ones the hackers want to use.
Facial Spoofing
We all know (and potentially feel uneasy about the fact that) facial recognition technology was created and is used to unlock mobile devices and laptops.
Increasingly, it's now being incorporated in other areas, such as law enforcement, airport security, healthcare, education, marketing, and advertising.
Facial spoofing happens through illegally obtained biometric data, either directly or covertly, from a person’s online profiles or through hacked systems.
For instance, a bad buy downloads your newest selfie from Instagram and then uses it for less than lawful activity.
Text Message Spoofing
Text message spoofing (commonly known as SMS spoofing) is when the sender of a text message (the bad guy) tricks users with fake displayed sender information.
Legitimate businesses sometimes do this for marketing purposes by replacing a long number with a short and easy-to-remember alphanumeric ID, ostensibly to make it more convenient for customers.
Sadly, scammers can also do it. They hide their real identity behind an alphanumeric sender ID, often making themselves out to be an actual company or organization you'd recognize.
Often, these spoofed texts include links to SMS phishing (known as “smishing”) sites or malware downloads. Spoofing work combined with phishing threats? No, thank you!!
Website Spoofing
Website spoofing (also known as URL spoofing) is a type of spoofing attack when scammers create a fraudulent website that looks legitimate, like banks or other legitimate service providers.
The spoofed site will have a really familiar login page, stolen logos, eerily similar branding, and even a spoofed domain that appears correct at first glance.
That's why it's really important to be alert and aware when visiting a website online because no one wants to end up on malicious websites!
Hackers build these spoofed websites to steal your login credentials and potentially drop malware onto your computer.
Often, website spoofing works hand in hand with email spoofing. For instance, scammers may send you an email containing a link to their fake website.
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Spoofing Attacks
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a protocol allowing network communications to reach a specific device on a network.
ARP spoofing, sometimes also called ARP poisoning, happens when a malicious actor (again, the scammer) sends falsified ARP messages over a local area network.
This connects the attacker’s MAC address with the IP address of a legitimate device or server on the network. This means that the attacker can interrupt, alter, or even prevent any data intended for that IP address.
Extension Spoofing
Extension spoofing cleverly hides the file type, making it easier to convince the target (you) to interact with malware downloads.
Spoofers know that people have been warned against installing executables, so they figure out ways to hide them in plain sight.
The scammers may disguise a malware executable with a spoofed extension such as doc.exe. The file is displayed in the email as newfile.doc, and the recipient doesn't think twice about downloading and installing it.
How to Detect Spoofing and Prevent It
- Use a VPN: Using a VPN like Mysterium VPN can help protect you by encrypting your internet traffic and masking your IP address, making it harder for attackers to impersonate or redirect your data.
- Don't click on links or open attachments from unknown senders: They could contain malware or viruses that'll infect your device. If you're unsure, it's best to ignore such messages.
- Never answer emails or calls from someone you don't know: Any communication with a scammer carries potential risk and invites further unwanted messages.
- Set up two-factor authentication everywhere: This is a simple extra layer of security for the authentication process. It makes it harder for attackers to access your devices or online accounts.
- Use strong passwords: Ideally, it's a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, special characters, and numbers. You must avoid using the same password on different websites and change your password regularly. A password manager tool is a fantastic strategy to manage your complicated passwords.
- Review your online privacy settings: If you use social media, you need to be careful who you connect with and learn how to use your privacy and security settings to ensure you stay safe. If you recognize suspicious behavior, have clicked on spam, or have been scammed online, take steps to secure your account and be sure to report it.
- Don’t give out personal information online: Avoid disclosing personal and private information online unless you are 100% sure it's a trusted source. Also, don't input your login details into a website unless you're dead sure it's real and can be trusted.
- Keep your network and software updated: Software updates involve security patches, bug fixes, and new exciting features – keeping your stuff updated squashes the risk of malware infection, security breaches, and other cyber threats.
- Look out for websites, emails, or messages with spelling errors: This can be a sign of spoofing. Only visit websites with a valid security certificate in the address bar.
- Complain to local law enforcement: whether that's your local police department, a group of cyber security experts, or a federal institution like the Federal Consumer Complaint Center (FCC), you should tell professionals if you've fallen victim to spoofing.
- Use malware protection: Choosing software that'll protect you against viruses and malware content alike, an antivirus software is always a good bet.
Protect Yourself Against Cyber Threats
Welcome to the end of the article! By now, you're basically an expert in defining and identifying different types of spoofing attacks.
Whether that's GPS spoofing, DNS spoofing, or good old email spoofing, now you know what it is, and how best to protect yourself!
