What Is Pharming?
If phishing is a random and haphazard way of finding information, pharming is much more dangerous.
The phisher sends out emails and hopes for a tiny percentage response. If each identity theft victim is worth several thousand, a miniscule response can become very profitable.
The pharmer on the other hand, plants malicious software into a machine or server. This may be done on site, but installing a programme or by adding it as a trojan horse to other software. In other words, pharming is technical intrusion.
One effective way of interfering with a transaction is to change the DNS record. DNS refers to the Domain Naming System and is the numerical code (IP or Internt Protocol) that represents each web address on earth. Hackers can redirect web traffic from a legitimate site to their fraudulent copy.
A major strength in the armour of the pharmer is that the domain name displayed in a web browser will still show the legitimate site name. This means that a user will be unlikely to know that they are visiting a rogue site.
These Trojan horses can be added to innocuos software downloads and in the early days of the web, many porn and gambling sites were used for this task.
For more about phishing:
Phishing
Phishing Attacks
Phishing Identity Theft
Spear Phishing
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