spoofing
- In network technology, spoofing is a technique for reducing bandwidth requirements in Internetworking. This technique reduces network overhead and thereby lowers the cost of transmission over wide area networks as well as network utilization. Spoofing reduces cyclically sent messages, such as network management information, by having a router act as a proxy and answer for a connected remote device. For example, spoofing makes a connection appear to the LAN device as still existing, even though it has already been dropped. For wide-area connections, this has the advantage that a connection can be terminated after a certain period of time in the absence of useful data, although it would normally have to be maintained by the cyclic management data packets.
- In Internet terminology, spoofing has its own meaning and that is giving a false address. By giving the wrong Internet address, someone pretends to be an authorized user. Measures against spoofing that prevent the misuse of IP addresses are called anti-spoofing. There are the IP spoofing, DNS spoofing, WWW spoofing, address spoofing and ARP spoofing that work with simulated IP address based on the host address or domain name or with the mapping between IP and hardware address.
- Another spoofing technique to be mentioned is MAC address spoofing or MAC spoofing. This technique involves the manufacturer's fixed MAC address on the network card, which normally cannot be changed. However, there are tools that simulate a different MAC address for the operating system. This has the effect of changing the identity of the computer.
- Another spoofing method is email spoofing. In this case, the header is exchanged with the e-mail address, giving the impression that the e-mail was sent by a different sender. This technique is used by spammers to send spam and trick the recipients of the spam into taking actions, such as opening an attachment. Mail spoofing is facilitated by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol( SMTP), which is used to transfer most mail, because it does not have an authentication mechanism.
- Spoofing, the concealment or manipulation of one's own identity, is also used in mobile communications, as SMS spoofing. In this case, the sender's own data is replaced by fake names, jokes, numbers or idiosyncratic imitations such as "German Chancellor" or "Pope". The goals of SMS spoofing can be many and varied: some people want to have fun, others want to commit fraud and obtain secret account or identity numbers, and still others want to send viruses. Using the short message service (SMS) with fake identities is a punishable offense in some countries.