Phish!
Another,
relatively new, scam: the phishers sneak their way through - for example,
through a purchase on eBay, where the account holder gives his bank details -
the account number and bank code of a potential involuntary accomplice. Shortly
before a robbery, they contact him (mostly by e-mail, but now often also by
phone), explain to him that a larger amount of money will soon arrive on his
account and ask him to pay the money minus a commission via Western Union to
transfer them.
Anyone who complies with this request is also liable to prosecution. Keeping
the money is of course equally unfair, even if nobody seems to have noticed the
fraud. So it is risky to wait for the phishing victim to report itself. Because
that will certainly file a criminal complaint immediately.
The only correct course of action is to contact your bank immediately so that
the money can be refunded to the phishing victim immediately. A criminal
complaint against the fraudsters is also advisable, although it is unlikely
that the backers, who are waiting for the money somewhere in distant foreign
countries can actually be arrested.
How Does Pharming Work?
As with phishing, the pharming method
exploits a user's good faith. The victim thinks he is on a reputable
website of a well-known service provider - e.g. B. on the website of eBay,
a credit card service provider, or the savings bank - to be. Instead, the
user is redirected to a deceptively similar, manipulated website that fishes
his user names, log-in data, and passwords and uses them for fraud purposes. In
the meantime, pharming is even said to be illegally used by credit bureaus to
obtain information about target persons, which is used for risk assessments and
ratings by insurance companies and credit institutions.
The fraudulent, faked websites are located on the online fraudsters' own servers,
who operate large server farms for this purpose. The term “pharming” as an
online fraud method was derived from this. Technically speaking, pharming
is based on manipulating DNS queries from web browsers.
What Is DNS and How Does Pharming Manipulation Work Technically?
DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is a global directory
service that manages the names used on the World Wide Web. When visiting a
website, the operating system of a computer contacts a DNS server in a similar
way to a directory inquiry - it assigns an IP address to the hostname (the
Internet address / URL). Before it does that, it looks at an internal host
list on the computer. It is checked whether the URL already exists. If
this is the case, the DNS server is not contacted.
Pharming uses manipulated DNS servers and “lies” to the victim's
computer when it queries the DNS. It is suggested to the computer that an
Internet address has supposedly been assigned before it is verified on the DNS
computer ("DNS flooding"). Alternatively, pharming specialists
use malware and
inject Trojans or other pests into the operating system of the pharming victim. The
user thinks he is calling up the website of a service provider - instead, he is
redirected to manipulated, similar pages on other servers. This is where
the user's personal data is fished.
Protection Against Phishing
The best protection against phishing is offered by the
latest antivirus software like total security and an active firewall.
Comments
Post a Comment