Spoofing Attack

An Attack where an Attacker invents a data transmission supposedly coming from somewhere else.

As an example, if an Attacker is able to determine which data a bank typically transmits to another to initiate a legitimate money transfer, in a Spoof Attack the Attacker would send made-up data of the same structure to the receiver, thereby causing money to be sent.

In the context of Contact Tracing, a successful Spoof Attack could be used by an Attacker to create “fake” contacts between the target of the Attack and infected individuals, thereby causing them to be considered potentially infected.

See also Wikipedia entry on spoofing attack.