Pharming is a cyberattack that redirects a website's traffic to a fraudulent site by installing malicious software on a victim's computer or by exploiting vulnerabilities in Domain Name System servers, without requiring any action by the victim. It is distinguished from phishing, which relies on deceiving a user into voluntarily handing over credentials such as usernames and passwords through fake emails or messages; pharming instead alters a victim's hosts file or exploits DNS weaknesses to silently reroute a browser to the fake site. Both techniques are increasingly used together to obtain information for online identity theft.
Facts
Elements of OffenseRedirecting a website's traffic to a fake site by installing a malicious program on the victim's computer, by changing the hosts file or exploiting DNS server software 1 Notable ExamplePanix domain hijack, 15 January 2005 1 Classification
Offense GradeSerious or Indictable Offense 1 Connections
Sources
1. Pharming (Wikipedia)
Lead paragraph, first sentence
redirect a website's traffic to another, fake site by installing a malicious program on the victim's computer
Instances of pharming
On 15 January 2005, the domain name for a large New York ISP, Panix, was hijacked to point to a website in Australia.
In Group: Interception, Spoofing and Redirection Attacks, Lead sentence
Pharming is a cyberattack intended to redirect a website's traffic to another, fake site by installing a malicious program on the victim's computer in order to gain access to it.
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