Internet Security Threats : Spoofing

Fooling, misguiding and misleading computer users into thinking that the source of their information is actually coming from a legitimate user is known as spoofing..

Spoofing actually means deceivement..

Spoofing can be done in various ways..a short brief summary on some of them are given as follows:-

• IP Spoofing.
• DNS Spoofing.
• ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) Spoofing.

IP Spoofing:

Here, a hacker changes the source- address of an IP packet to make it seem like as though its coming from a legitimate or genuine source, but in reality it might actually be coming from the hacker..

This way, not only is the hacker able to hack into the system but, at the same time he/she is able to hide his IP address from the eyes of the firewalls..

Usually systems running UNIX, i.e linux systems and RPC services are mainly targeted for IP Spoofing..

Well basically, it's the services that require IP authentication that are mainly targeted for IP Spoofing..

A good modern updated firewall system can easily detect IP spoofing when properly configured...

DNS Spoofing:

Re-directing users without their knowledge to a different duplicate website and collecting their sensitive personal information through duplicate web forms without their knowledge is DNS Spoofing..

In order words, it is re-directing users to an incorrect fake location..

DNS is what manages the domain names and creation of equivalent IP address, hence DNS Spoofing can be a very serious and dangerous threat to an online system...

If a website exists and DNS calculates an IP that is related to an hacker's site , then the user will be unknowingly re-directed to the hacker's website and if the hacker maintains his website similarily to the actual website then the user will think that it is the actual site and might provide his/her's sensitive personal information like credit or debit card details, bank details, etc when filling up fake forms to make a purchase or even the users login information can be stolen.

The hacker can now do whatever he wants with the stolen information...

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) Spoofing:

ARP poisoning is another term that can be used for ARP Spoofing...

The maintainence of a table of all the MAC addresses of all the computers connected in a network is ARP.

Based on the mappings from the ARP's tables any information that comes to the ARP is delivered to it's respective computers in the network. If ARP is'nt able to find a particular MAC address for a message, it then broadcasts a message to all the systems to get a reply from the destination system with it's MAC address, after getting the address it is then updated on the MAC table...

ARP Spoofing happens at this stage...

The hacker sends a reply to the ARP's broadcasted message claiming that the hacker's MAC address is the genuine one and the ARP then adds it to it's table...

The hacker now gains access to the network and has the ability to do whatever he may want to..