Spoofing Protection

Spoofing is a common tactic used by cyber criminals to gain personal or financial information. This is done by using someone else’s identity e.g., a supplier or a customer, to lure you into revealing information or transferring funds under false pretences. There is often a social engineering aspect of spoofing attacks, as hackers gain information by gaining people’s trust.

The most common types of spoofing are email spoofing and website spoofing. Email spoofing is when an attacker sends an email that appears to come from a legitimate source, when in reality it is a fraudulent email used to gain company  information or funds. This is the most common form of spoofing, with almost 25% of emails from brands coming from a malicious source.

Website spoofing entails the creation of lookalike domains and websites to those of a known brand. Malicious actors use these fake sites to access customers’ login information, financial details, or sensitive data. With either method the domain will look legitimate but may contain an extra letter, a number instead of a letter or a character from another alphabet.

What does spoofing protection do?

Spoofing protection ensures your brand is protected via a secure domain. This is achieved by maintaining the security of your website certificates and ensuring that you have an email authentication system in place through solutions such as DMARC. This generates an automatic response to suspected fraudulent domains and quick remediation.

A spoofing protection service will also scan the internet continually so that any new lookalike domains are flagged right away. When you first take out a spoofing protection service, you’ll likely find a whole raft of lookalike domains that need investigating to determine if they are legitimate and used within your organisation or set up to spoof your organisation. Once these domains are addressed, a continual scan will allow you to respond to lookalike domains as they are created so that you can get them taken down before any harm is done to your customers, supply chain and, of course, your brand.

Why you need spoofing protection?

An unprotected domain increases the opportunity for your brand to be spoofed and fraudulent lookalike domains to be created. It’s important to constantly scan the web for any lookalike domains so that they can be taken down before any harm is done.

A spoofing attack can be harmful to your company, but also your whole supply chain. The repercussions of a spoofing attack include a damaged brand reputation, financial losses, decreased efficiency, and more company downtime. By making it harder for cyber criminals to infiltrate your emails and website, you can keep your organisation running smoothly.

Example of a spoofing scam

BEC attacks pose a significant cyber security risk, impacting organisations across various industries and sizes. These typically involve cyber criminals impersonating trusted contacts, such as suppliers, business partners, or even employees within the targeted organization. By crafting deceptive emails, attackers aim to manipulate recipients into transferring funds or disclosing sensitive information, leading to substantial financial losses and potential reputational harm.

In a BEC attack, criminals either gain unauthorised access to an email account or convincingly impersonate a legitimate account to deceive employees. These attacks are commonly directed at high-level personnel or individuals with the authority to approve financial transactions. For example, a BEC email might appear to be from a regular vendor, requesting a payment to a newly updated bank account. Alternatively, an email may look like a message from the CEO asking for a quick purchase of gift cards for employee incentives.

Unlike broader phishing attacks, BEC emails are highly targeted, focusing on specific employees with financial authorisation roles. Due to the lower volume and targeted nature of these messages, they can bypass traditional email security filters, particularly if they originate from compromised email accounts with legitimate domains. As a result, organisations must adopt advanced email security measures and employee awareness training to mitigate the risks posed by BEC attacks effectively.

Protecting your domain from spoofing is essential. Implementing security measures like DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) helps prevent impersonation, while BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) strengthens security by displaying your logo next to emails. Additionally, securing domain names and using automated scanning tools can safeguard against DNS attacks.

How to avoid a spoofing attack

Spoofing spans across emails, websites, and advert fraud. These methods attempt to gain access to sensitive data by mimicking trusted domains.  This can lead to stolen credentials, financial information, brand damage, or even legal action. As a result, it a paramount that businesses are protecting themselves against spoofing attacks in every form.

Businesses can implement email authentication protocols such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), and Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) to prevent unauthorised email senders. Another important practise is to monitor and register similar domains to ensure that misuse cannot occur. Secure your website with HTTPS and use a trusted SSL/TLS certificate to provide encrypted communication and verify authenticity. Regularly check your domain’s DNS entries to ensure no unauthorised changes have been made.

This is just the beginning, all these methods, and more, should be used in tandem to robustly secure your domain.

Protecting your organisation while online

E-commerce and online invoicing is extremely convenient for people in our increasingly digital age; however, it has also opened a plethora of risk as cyber criminals have taken advantage of it as a new opportunity to access online data. Around 90% of all cyber attacks are a result of stolen login details, where victims are tricked into visiting malicious websites via text or email and inadvertently revealing their passwords or downloading malware. Hackers can access online accounts to steal payment information and make fraudulent purchases or even gain access their accounts on other sites if they’ve used similar passwords.

It is important that to be aware of these risks and spot potential red flags, so you do not put your organisation at risk. Be cautious when browsing online and clicking links from vendors. Foster a security culture, enforcing small but important practises such as complex passwords, and MFA. As your supply chain grows, so do the number of access points for cyber criminals. Don’t leave your domain vulnerable to attack.