Pharm's Way
Learn how to protect yourself from the latest internet attack.
By Amanda C. Kooser • Jul 1, 2005
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Just when you finally figured out how to deal with viruses,worms, spam and phishing, along comes pharming. Pharming is likephishing on steroids. A pharming attack maliciously redirects a webbrowser to a spoof site that harvests personal information. Bankingsites are top targets. "It's less of a visible threat,because there is no e-mail. It operates behind the scenes,"says Scott Chasin, chief technology officer with Denver-basede-mail security company MX Logic. Unlike phishing, pharming has no socialengineering lure. That makes it a more dangerous and stealthymethod of attack.
Chasin cites several ways pharming can take place. DNS-cachepoisoning, which exploits faults in DNS servers, and malware arethe main vehicles that have been identified so far. And a Trojanwas identified earlier this year that targeted several majorbanks.
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