An attacker crafts a message that masquerades as a message from a
principal other than the actual message sender. This may involve having the
attacker create content for the purpose of making it appear to originate
from a legitimate "spoofed" source. Phishing and Pharming attacks often
attempt to do this so that their attempts to gather sensitive information
appear to come from a legitimate source. Alternatively, an attacker may
intercept a message from a legitimate sender and attempt to make it look
like the message comes from them without changing its content. The latter
form of this attack can be used to hijack credentials from legitimate users.
This attack need not be limited to transmitted messages - any resource that
is associated with an identity (for example, a file with a signature) can be
the target of an attack where the attacker attempts to change the apparent
source. This attack differs from Content Spoofing attacks since, in Content
Spoofing, the attacker does not wish to change the apparent source of the
message but instead wishes to change what the source appears to say. In an
Identity Spoofing attack, the attacker is attempting to change the apparent
source of the content.
Attack Prerequisites
The identity associated with the message or resource must be removable or
modifiable in an undetectable way for the attacker to perform this
attack.
Resources Required
No special resource are required for most variants of this attack.
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