Cyber attack of pharming

Pharming attacks redirected traffic way from a legitimate website towards a false site, for example one that has been set up to look like a legitimate bank’s homepage. The term ‘pharming’ has existed since 1996, but it was not until late 2003, that the technique actually emerged in the service do cyber criminals.

Pharming attacks are similar to phishing attacks in that they are designed to extract confidential data from victims by pretending to be a trusted source and requesting information.

The difference is that pharming attacks resolve the victim’s DNS to a malicious server when attempting to visit a legitimate website. Pharming can be conducted either by altering the hosts file on a victim’s computer or by exploitation of a vulnerability in DNS server software. Redirects of this nature are often facilitated by malware already downloaded and installed on the victim’s machine and represent a one-to-many attack directed at the widest possible network of victims.

It is a form of online fraud very similar to phishing as pharmers rely upon the same bogus websites and theft of confidential data.
Cyber attack of pharming