What is the pharmacy?
Pharming is a type of Internet fraud in which an attempt to redirect Internet users from legitimate websites is made to fraudulent or potentially harmful. It is somewhat similar to the "phishing" in which the person is sent e -mail or other type of message "bait" in an effort to allow this person to click on the link in e -mail. This link will direct it to a fake website similar to a legitimate site in the hope of entering sensitive or private information, which then collects a malicious website. However, pharmaceuticals try to redirect computer users to fraudulent websites without any type of bait or other user action.
While both fraud types try to direct computer users to a malicious website where private information can be collected, phishing requires the user to click on the link or otherwise be actively focused on the website. Pharming attacks try to correct the process by which one approaches the Internet website to redirect a person to the ŠA coded website without the user knowing that there is an attack. This process can be achieved mainly by one of two methods: either through a compromised domain name server (DNS) or a compromised router or network.
The most potentially devastating type of pharmacy attack would include damage or "poisoning" of the DNS server. DNS servers will direct the Internet users to the website by converting text names of hosts such as www.wisegeek.com to the Numerical Internet Protocol (IP) that the servers recognize. This process allows the user to enter an easily remembered host name and be correctly directed to a website that has a numeric address on the Internet.
DNS poisoning would allow a pharmacies attack to redirect a large number of users from a legitimate site to a malicious website without ever re -rejection to the alialization of the attack. Users would enter the correct name HThe shadow, but would be directed by the poisoned DNS server to the IP address of the malicious website. This site could then install malicious software on users' computers or simply look legitimate and wait for users to enter private information for fraudulent purposes.
router or other type of network hardware can also be used as part of a pharmacy attack. This can be achieved through malicious software that rewrites firmware built into the device. Firmware is software installed on the device itself, such as a router that processes the basic functions of the device regardless of the second hardware or software used.
In router and network servers, this firmware usually contains instructions for which the DNS server system should use. The firmware can potentially change this firmware so as to indicate a specific DNS server controlled by the attack by the attack, or it has already been poisoned. Unfortunately, antivirus and firewall programs cannot protect P -userDirects by pharmacies and for securing network servers and routers are usually needed more sophisticated programs.