Spoofing is a form of cyberattack in which an attacker impersonates a trusted source to trick users, systems, or applications into revealing information, granting access, or performing unintended actions. By manipulating identifying information such as email addresses, domains, IP addresses, phone numbers, or login pages, attackers disguise themselves to appear credible and trustworthy.
Spoofing is often used in the early stages of more complex attacks, such as phishing, malware delivery, credential theft, or business email compromise (BEC). Because spoofed messages and interfaces look familiar or legitimate, users are more likely to engage without hesitation, making spoofing one of the most effective social engineering tactics.
Spoofing undermines trust. Whether it’s a fake email that appears to come from an executive or a cloned login page designed to harvest credentials, spoofing attacks exploit brand familiarity, personal relationships, and human behavior to succeed.
Consequences to the business can include:
Spoofing doesn’t rely on technical flaws — it preys on user trust. That makes it more dangerous and harder to stop than attacks that require system vulnerabilities.
Spoofing can target multiple digital and communication layers. The common thread is deception — attackers forge identifiers to appear legitimate. Common types include:
Spoofing is often combined with phishing, malware, or lateral movement.
These examples show how spoofing can enable a wide variety of outcomes, from theft and surveillance to sabotage and fraud.
Spoofing detection often relies on behavioral and contextual awareness rather than static rules. Security information and event management (SIEM) systems aggregate logs from email, DNS, endpoint, and web traffic, highlighting patterns like mismatched domains or unusual reply chains. Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platforms can quarantine spoofed messages, block lookalike domains, or trigger escalations. Threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) provide indicators of compromise (IoCs) related to spoofing infrastructure — such as phishing kits, IP addresses, or registrant data. User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) help spot downstream effects of successful spoofing, including off-hours logins or abnormal credential reuse.
Anomali brings all of these capabilities together to expose spoofing campaigns early, enrich alerts with global intelligence, and coordinate rapid response.
Spoofing is a foundational tactic for threat actors — not because it’s complex, but because it works. By imitating trusted sources, attackers bypass technical controls and reach users directly, initiating a wide range of attacks through a single well-crafted deception.
To detect spoofing, organizations need layered defenses that go beyond filters and blocklists. The most effective protections combine threat intelligence, behavioral analytics, and automation to identify spoofing attempts across communication channels and respond before an attack gains traction.
Anomali helps uncover spoofing campaigns by correlating brand impersonation, phishing infrastructure, and user behavior across platforms — empowering security teams to detect and disrupt attacks before they escalate.
Want to see how Anomali exposes and stops spoofing before it reaches your users? Schedule a demo.