A user has unknowingly gone to a fraudulent site. The security analyst notices the following system change on the user’s host: Old `hosts’ file: 127.0.0.1 localhost New `hosts’ file: 127.0.0.1 localhost 5.5.5.5 www.comptia.com Which of the following attacks has taken place?
A. Spear phishing B. Pharming C. Phishing D. Vishing
Answer: B
Explanation: We can see in this question that a fraudulent entry has been added to the user’s hosts file. This will point the URL: www.comptia.com to 5.5.5.5 instead of the correct IP address. Similar in nature to e-mail phishing, pharming seeks to obtain personal or private (usually financial related) information through domain spoofing. Rather than being spammed with malicious and mischievous e-mail requests for you to visit spoof Web sites which appear legitimate, pharming ‘poisons’ a DNS server (or hosts file) by infusing false information into the DNS server, resulting in a user’s request being redirected elsewhere. Your browser, however will show you are at the correct Web site, which makes pharming a bit more serious and more difficult to detect. Phishing attempts to scam people one at a time with an e-mail while pharming allows the scammers to target large groups of people at one time through domain spoofing.