Spoofing

Making a message or transaction appear to come from a source other than the originator.

IP spoofing refers to sending a network packet that appears to come from a source other than its actual source.

Some market analysts maintain that the increased volatility in stock markets may be the result of an illegal practice known as spoofing, or phantom bids.

To spoof, traders who own shares of a certain stock place an anonymous buy order for a large number of shares of the stock through an electronic communications network (ECN). Then they cancel, or withdraw, the order seconds later.

As soon as the order is placed, however, the price jumps. That's because investors following the market closely enter their own orders to buy what seems to be a hot stock and drive up the price.

When the price rises, the spoofer sells shares at the higher price, and gets out of the market in that stock. Investors who bought what they thought was a hot stock may be left with a substantial loss if the price quickly drops back to its prespoof price.

Spoofing is a variant of the scam known as pump and dump.

In computer networking, the term Internet Protocol address spoofing is the creation of IP packets with a forged (spoofed) source IP address. Since 'IP address' is sometimes just referred to as an IP, IP spoofing is another name for this term

Any technique by which sensitive information or commands may be substituted or stopped without the knowledge of the authorized personnel involved.

The impersonation of an e-mail sender, IP connection, or a domain that causes an e-mail message to appear as though it originates from a sender other than the actual sender of the message. [Exchange 2007]

See spamdexing.

The ability to fool a biometric sensor into recognizing an illegitimate user as a legitimate user (verification) or into missing an identification of someone that is in the database. See also liveness detection, mimic.

(COMSEC) [The] interception, alteration, and retransmission of a cipher signal or data in such a way as to mislead the recipient. [NIS] 2. (AIS) [An] attempt to gain access to an AIS by posing as an authorized user. [NIS] 3. Unauthorized use of legitimate Identification and Authentication (I&A) data, however it was obtained, to mimic a subject different from the attacker. Impersonating, masquerading, piggybacking, and mimicking are forms of spoofing. [INFOSEC-99]