With every passing day, there are novel methods of hacking that are being discovered by the vexatious attackers, and hence it is important to acquire the right awareness to be ahead of them. Only when the right level of understanding is obtained, it becomes easier to defend against the attacks.
Among the many attacking ways employed in the digital world today, this post discusses two popular methods: Sniffing and Spoofing. Attacks and attackers are highly sophisticated and devise intelligent schemes to remain undetected for a long time. Therefore, knowing what is spoofing and sniffing, the ways to identify them, the difference between sniffing and spoofing would help go a long way in securing your system and data.
To begin with, it is essential to understand what is IP sniffing and IP spoofing. In sniffing, an attacker falsifies the authorized readers, that can scan the legal tags to acquire valuable data. In spoofing attacks, an attacker efficaciously fakes as an official and legal operator of a system. The duplicating factor of a spoofing attack is an approved user of a system. Spoofing attacks are not the same as the other attacks such as counterfeiting or sniffing. However, counterfeiting, packet-sniffing, and spoofing all fall under the ambit of misrepresentation and deception kinds of attack. Let’s take a brief look at the sniffing and spoofing meaning before understanding the difference between sniffing and spoofing:
The practice or technique of monitoring, gathering, capturing, and logging some or all data packets passing through a given computer network is called sniffing or packet sniffing. A packet sniffer is composed of two parts namely; a network adapter and software that is used by a network to observe or troubleshoot network traffic.
Attackers use these sniffers to seize data packets that contain valuable information and analyze the network traffic. Sniffing is categorized into active sniffing and passive sniffing. In Active sniffing, there is the constant activity by the attacker to obtain information and sniff the traffic from the switch network. In passive sniffing, the attacker is hidden and sniffs through the hub.
Any kind of behavior where an attacker mask as an authentic user or a device to secure something beneficial or crucial information for their gain is called spoofing. There are various kinds of spoofing such as website spoofing, E-mail spoofing, and IP spoofing. Other common methods include ARP spoofing attacks and DNS server spoofing attacks.
An E-mail spoofing targets the user while an IP spoofing is predominantly targeted at a network.
In an IP spoofing attack, the attacker attempts to obtain illicit and illegal access to a network through messages with a bogus or spoofed IP address to deceive and show it off as a message from a trusted source. This is achieved by using a genuine host’s IP address and varying the packet headers led from their personal system to mimic it as an original and a trusted computer’s IP address.
Now that we have understood what is sniffing and spoofing, the spoofing and sniffing definition, let’s now compare packet sniffing and packet spoofing.
Whereas in spoofing, the attacker rip-offs the authorizations of a user and deploys those details in a system as an authentic user to unveil attacks against network hosts, take data, disburse malware, or circumvent access controls.
The software or method depleted to achieve this is called a packet sniffer, which is a function that sniffs without altering the network’s packets in any way.
In both the sniffing and spoofing attacks, the victims or the targeted persons are completely unaware of the fact that their data and exchanges have been intercepted and conceded. This becomes one of the greatest strengths for the intruders who take away the private information for their undue benefits. Hence, it is imperative to understand their mechanism and know ways to defend against these attacks. Some of the ways to defend against these attacks are as follows:
Be mindful and aware of every activity that happens in your system to be secure and safe at all times.
So, have you made up your mind to make a career in Cyber Security? Visit our Cyber Security Courses for further help. It is the first program in offensive technologies in India and allows learners to practice in a real-time simulated ecosystem, that will give you an edge in this competitive world.
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