Masquerade Attack

Definitions

1. An attack in which an adversary pretends to be a legitimate user, service, process, or trusted artifact to gain access or avoid suspicion. Masquerading can involve stolen credentials, renamed binaries, spoofed email identities, or forged system attributes.

   In plain English: An attack that works by pretending to be something trusted.

   Example: "The malware used a masquerade attack by naming itself like a legitimate updater and signing in with a stolen service account."

Related Terms

• Honeypot
• JWT
• Access Token
• Account Lockout
• Authentication Factor
• Authentication Protocol
• Brute Force Protection
• Challenge Token