Pharming

Pharming, pronounced farming, is one of the most malicious scams on the internet. The intent is to gain personal information, such as usernames and passwords. It is performed by changing files on the victim’s operating system or by exploiting vulnerabilities in a DNS server. Once inside the server, an intruder can manipulate thousands of domain names. When a DNS server has been compromised for activities such as pharming or phishing, it considered to be poisoned. In recent years, scammers have used a combination of pharming and phishing to commit identity theft. Pharming has grown to become a huge problem for companies hosting E-commernce and online banking sites. It poses such a tremendous threat that security solutions used to fight spam, viruses and spyware are not enough to protect a host and its clients because the actual computer is not harmed. When the server has been compromised, advanced measures such as anti-pharming software is required.