Spoofing
Faking the sender's name, email address or phone number so that a message seems to come from a real company or someone you know. Email lets the sender write any sender address, like writing any return address on an envelope. SMS sender names and caller phone numbers can be faked too, and phishing often relies on this. Receivers can check a message against rules that the domain name's owner publishes in DNS records: SPF lists the servers allowed to send email for the domain, DKIM is a digital signature the sending server adds to each message, and DMARC says what to do with mail that fails these checks. The malware Emotet, for example, spread through spoofed emails that replied to real past conversations stolen from infected computers.
More terms on this topic
- API abuse
- Backdoor
- Brute-force attack
- Credential stuffing
- CVE identifier
- Dark web / leak site
- DoS / DDoS attack
- Insider misuse
- Malware / computer virus
- Man-in-the-middle attack
- Misconfiguration
- Misdelivery
- Phishing
- Ransomware
- Spam
- Unauthorized access, intrusion and compromise
- Unauthorized login / impersonation
- Vulnerability
- Web exploit / SQL injection / XSS
- Web skimming
- Zero-day attack