As soon as almost all computer users already got used to — or at least heard about — the word “phishing”, another somewhat confusing word appeared. Pharming. Does it differ from phishing — if yes, how?
Two Pharmings
Actually, two completely different fields use the term “pharming” now. We can say there exist two separate “pharmings”.
If genetics or businessmen from pharmaceutical industry are talking about pharming (spelled like that) it might have nothing to do with computers. This word has long been familiar to genetic engineers. For them, it’s a merger of “farming” and “pharmaceutical” and means the genetic engineering technique — inserting extraneous genes into host animals or plants in order to make them produce some pharmaceutical product. Although it is very interesting matter, this article isn’t about it.
As for PC users, the term “pharming” recently emerged to denote exploitation of a vulnerability in the DNS server software caused by malicious code. This code allows the cybercriminal who contaminated this PC with it to...