pharming

(agriculture) The skills and practices of agriculture.

Setting up a fraudulent Web site that contains copies of pages from a legitimate Web site in order to capture confidential information from users. By hacking into DNS servers and changing IP addresses (see DNS hijacking), users are automatically redirected to the bogus site, at least for some period of time until the DNS records can be restored.

For example, if a bank's DNS were changed, users could be redirected to a Web site that looks familiar. The bogus site could just collect usernames and passwords, or it could allow access to the site and, using some pretense, request financial information. Unlike phishing schemes that use e-mail to make people go to the phony site, pharming is more natural. Users are going to the site on their own and are certainly not suspicious because the pages look familiar. See phishing and DNS hijacking.

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