What is Network spoofing and what are the types of it?

Today, you can find people from all the walks of life using internet regularly. On the other hand the problems and dangers in internet usage have also been increasing. There are many types of internet threats such as ID theft, virus attacks and spoofing.  Spoofing is the act of assuming the identity of some other computer or program. Spoofing takes the forms of IP spoofing, email spoofing and network spoofing.

While most of the spoofing act is malicious and dangerous, the network spoofing can serve as a helpful technique. When you gain access to sources and information of any unauthorized network, it is known as network spoofing.

Network Spoofing Pros and cons:

The hackers can use Network spoofing to enter into certain secured networks for obtaining restricted files and information. In this process, the hacker will assume a IP address of a trusted computer and easily gains access to the restricted network.  As the information comes from a legitimate source, the gateway of the network allows the exchange of packets of information.

On the other hand, the network spoofing can also be a beneficial tool to handle the network traffic. If there is lot of network traffic, the gateway will not be able to validate every packets of information exchanged in the network. So, in order to minimize the networks traffic the network spoofing technique can be used.

Types of Network spoofing:

  • Protocol Spoofing
  • DNS spoofing
  • MAC spoofing

Protocol Spoofing:

In every network, there is a protocol group called the Transmission Control Protocol(TCP). This protocol establishes, maintains and breaks down the connections. In the process of connecting the computer will send a check packet of data for verification. This adds up to the network traffic. This private network running over the public lines will incur extra charges as well. To avoid such a situation, the gateway can act as the remote computer and reply to the TCP messages. Here the network gateway is spoofing as the TCP connecting computer to reduce the traffic.

DNS spoofing:

When a web page is requested through a web browser, it does not connect to the real web address. Before connecting with the web page, it will check with the Domain Name System to get the original IP address. But companies maintain their own DNS server to save response time. So when you click on the web page, you are connected to the in-house server and not to the public DNS server. Here DNS server is spoofing as the public DNS server of the company.

MAC spoofing:

The entire device connected to a network will have a MAC (media access control) address. When you register for internet connection, the internet service provider will register the MAC address for a more secured connection. Only the device with that MAC address can be connected to the network. If the user wants dual access points for internet, it will not be accepted. So the new device will send the information through the registered MAC address to gain access to the network by spoofing the registered device MAC address.

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