Difference Between Phishing and Spoofing

Phishing and Spoofing are the types of attacks that often used in a similar sense. The prior difference between phishing and spoofing is that in phishing the scammer tries to trick the victim with an intent to steal the confidential details resulting in financial gain. On the other hand, spoofing doesn’t always involve financial gain, but the forging is similar.

Content: Phishing Vs Spoofing

1. Comparison Chart
2. Definition
3. Key Differences
4. Conclusion

Comparison Chart

Basis for comparison	Phishing	Spoofing
Basic	Phishing scammer spoof trustworthy organizations and people in order to gain the trust of their targets and steal information.	Spoofing defrauders are not necessarily trying to steal any information but may rather be trying to achieve other malicious goals.
Relationship	Phishing attacks can use spoofing as the strategy.	Spoofing isn't necessarily phishing.
Process	Phishing is accompanied with information stealing.	Spoofing not necessarily require information stealing.
Performs	Retrieval	Delivery

Definition of Phishing

Phishing is a form of social engineering where the defrauder attempts to fraudulently retrieve licit users’ sensitive information by imitating electronic communication from a trusted organization in an automated manner.

For example, the attacker creates his own website which looks identical to the real bank website. Then the attacker sends out an email to the legitimate customer of the bank to fool her. The mail is a sort of warning regarding to account’s security, and it mentions that the bank wants to issue new password because of security concerns along with the fake website link. When a customer clicks on the URL shown in the email, in the meantime the customer is redirected to the attacker’s site. The customer is prompted to enter the confidential information and customer evidently shares her sensitive information because she didn’t recognize that website is fake as it looks exactly the same. Then the attacker uses her account details to make purchases on behave of the customer.

Phishing attack involves three phishing steps.

• Firstly the mailer sends out a fraudulent email, SMS, VOIP, message on a social networking site to direct the users to the fraudulent website.
• Then the fraudulent website is set up, which prompt the user to provide confidential information.
• At the last step, the confidential information is used to achieve the payout.

There are various types of phishing such clone phishing, spear phishing, phone phishing etc.

Definition of Spoofing

Spoofing is similar to phishing, where the attacker stoles the identity of the licit user and pretence as another individual or organization with malicious intent, in order to breach the system’s security or to steal the users’ information. There are various kinds of spoofing attacks such as IP spoofing, Email spoofing, URL spoofing, MAC spoofing, and DNS spoofing.

Unlike phishing, spoofing attack can cause damage without stealing the information. For example, attacker A sends a forged email to the user B by using the identity of the user C. User B will perceive that the received email is from user C and will evidently reply. The spoofed email could have sent with the malicious intent.

Conclusion

Phishing and Spoofing are generally intended to exploit the security or steal the sensitive information for the financial gain. Phishing is always accompanied by information theft while in case of spoofing it is not necessary. Spoofing can be a part of phishing, but it is not phishing.