What Is: Pharming

nakulgupta

Mar 23 2005, 09:41 AM

Pharming has been called the 'next generation' of Phishing. Phishing requires a person to respond to a phoney e-mail in order to be taken to an illegitimate site; in Pharming, the targeted person need no respond to anything- he or she is automatically whisked to the illegitimate site.

Pharmers use 'DNS poisoning', or domain hijacks, to redirect users to illegitimate URL's in an attempt to gather personal data. Both methods can be used to direct users to fake WEbsites that look like legitimate ones, and make users disclose personal information.

Pharmers are the same kind of identity thieves who used techniques such as phishing. Pharming is more sophisticated because it does not require the intervention of the user!

The recent hijack of New York ISP Panix is typical of the type of threat that might emerge- such a domain hijac could well be the first step in a Pharming attack.

Reply

Qop

Mar 23 2005, 08:02 PM

Ow no not good to hear that. How can we ever be safe again.

well it's quite disturbing to discover that we don't need to do anything and still we get pulled out at strange and irritating websites. Do you know of any way how you can stop this? Or hasn't there been found a way yet>

Reply

nakulgupta

Mar 24 2005, 06:23 AM

Thing is...there hasnt been a full scale attack yet...we never will know if the site is legitimate if its well done. Like the hijack of one of the eBay sites..we could be taken to a duplicate site and be asked to give away Credit Card information or something like that..Only way to be safe...be alert....Its always good to do a visual IP trace on these sites before giving any information..Ex:- If the ping of a site....say microsoft.com lands up in some place other than the US....Theres definitely somehing fishy right.??

Reply

jcguy

Mar 25 2005, 01:31 PM

This is dangerous. All those people trying to trick other online users out of their money are endangering the security of the Internet and harming net commerce and activities. I would hate it when they done something nasty causing people to stay of the Internet.

I thihnk something should be done to protect the web from all these attacks.

Reply

SingleDaddyof2

Mar 25 2005, 01:48 PM

QUOTE(jcguy @ Mar 25 2005, 05:31 AM)

This is dangerous. All those people trying to trick other online users out of their money are endangering the security of the Internet and harming net commerce and activities. I would hate it when they done something nasty causing people to stay of the Internet.

I thihnk something should be done to protect the web from all these attacks.

I don't think you have to worry about something being done to protect the web from these attacks. There will be a demand for a product/service to safeguard against these attacks. To the computer security industry, this is just another opportunity to make and sell more products and make more money. They certainly wouldn't just stand by and let that opportunity get away. If you were a stockholder in a computer security company, would you let your company ignore the pharming phenomenon and the demand for anti-pharming products/services?

Reply