http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=651
Pharming - a new technique for Internet fraud
Author: Fernando de la Cuadra, Panda Software
Monday, 07 March 2005, 18:34 GMT
Hackers appear to have an increasing interest in reaping financial reward from
their actions and creations. If until now, phishing - using emails to lure
users into entering data into spoofed online banking websites - was one of the
most widespread fraud techniques, 'pharming' now poses an even greater threat.
Basically, pharming involves interfering with the name resolution process on
the Internet. When a user enters an address (such as www.pandasoftware.com)
this needs to be converted into a numeric IP address as 62.14.63.187. This is
known as name resolution, and the task is performed by DNS (Domain Name System)
servers. These servers store tables with the IP address of each domain name. On
a smaller scale, in each computer connected to the Internet there is a file
that stores a table with the names of servers and IP addresses so that it is
not necessary to access the DNS servers for certain server names.
Pharming consists in the name resolution system modification, so that when a
user thinks he or she is accessing to bank's web page, he or she is actually
accessing the IP of a spoofed site.
...
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