What Is The Difference Between Spoofing And Snooping?

Different types of attacks in network security are being used by cyber criminals to attack and steal sensitive information. The most common techniques, cyber criminals use is Spoofing and Snooping. Once the criminal gets the information, it is used to steal money or use the information for some illegal purpose.

Also Read: What’s More Dangerous- Spoofing or Sniffing?

Spoofing:

Spoofing is a technique used by cyber criminals with malicious intent. In spoofing Cybercriminals send messages to the victims disguising themselves as a genuine entity. Basically, it is a technique where criminals hide their true identity behind a fake one. Today there are different methods used to spoof victims. However, the most common method of spoofing is through Email.

Spoofing involves sending messages from a bogus or fake email address, so no one can identify its true source. Most of the email servers have security feature that prevents unauthorized users and criminals from sending fake messages, but spammers often send spam messages from their own SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), that allows them to use fake email addresses and send fake messages.

Another method of spoofing is through IP, which is done by faking a computer’s IP address. In this type of spoofing it is difficult for other systems to determine from where the computer is transmitting data. Although new software security systems have been developed that can identify these types of attacks and block the transmissions, but they aren’t accurate.

Therefore, a new system should be developed that can analyze these threats and stop the attack in its path.

Snooping:

Snooping in network security is a technique in which criminals get unauthorized access to another person’s data or company’s data. Snooping in network security includes casual observance of an email that appears on the user’s computer screen. More sophisticated Snooping in network security uses software programs to remotely monitor activity on a computer/network device.

Snooping in network security leads to loss of privacy of several kinds of information that should be private for a computer network. They may be one or all the following:

• Passwords
• Financial details
• Private data
• Low-level internet protocol information

However, companies also sometimes snoop on its employees legally to monitor their use of business systems and track Internet usage. Governments snoop on individuals to collect information to stop terrorism and crime. Main purpose of snooping is to listen or read communication or browse through files or system information of the user’s system.

Although snooping is always taken in a harmful sense, what snooping actually means is to track activity of a person using any program or utility that performs a monitoring function in computer technology. For example, a snoop server is used to capture network traffic for analysis, and the snooping protocol monitors information on a computer bus to ensure efficient processing.

Must Read: 40 Most Common Cyber Security Terms That Everyone Should Know

Dangers:

Both Snooping and Spoofing are security threats that target via the Internet and are the types of attacks in network security. Most of the users are completely unaware of this attack. If the network packets are not encrypted, the data within the network packet can be read using a snooper.

Cyber criminals send an information packet to the target host with a fake IP address. The targeted host sends an acknowledgment and waits for a response. However, if there is no reply queries remain unanswered and gets stored in the buffer of the targeted device. If this number increase buffer overflows and network device becomes unstable and crashes.

Another type of spoofing is that Cyber criminals fake the number or area code from where they are calling. This type of spoofing is done by telemarketers to hide their identity and to gain access to unprotected phone voicemail messages.

Conclusion:

Internet is a great way to communicate and get in touch with others, however, it can also be used by criminals for malicious intent. Therefore, we have to make sure that we are contacting the right person before sending any of our information.