Pharming

Pharming is a cyberattack that redirects users attempting to visit a legitimate website to a fraudulent, look-alike site without their conscious action, often by compromising DNS servers (DNS poisoning) or modifying a victim's local hosts file. Unlike phishing which typically relies on a lure to click, pharming can automatically divert traffic, making it particularly deceptive for harvesting credentials even from cautious users. While primarily a technical attack, security awareness can help users recognize subtle signs of a fake website, such as incorrect URLs or missing security indicators, even if they believe they accessed it directly.