BROWSER DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES SOFTWARE
BROWSER DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES CODE

Instead, the attacker steals data using malware background processes or automatically sends a user to a phishing website in their browser. In a pharming attack, users aren’t tricked into navigating to a malicious website. In a phishing attack, users are tricked into sending their credentials to a threat actor via email. For example, obtaining account credentials on an email account provides an attacker far more information than just stealing sensitive information from a targeted user.

Having control of an account could be much more valuable. Stealing data is a fundamental goal for an attacker, but stealing credentials gives a third-party complete control of your account. In DNS poisoning, the IP address is linked to a domain located on the attacker’s server. When browsers perform a lookup, they direct users to the IP address listed on a DNS server. Every computer connecting to the Internet uses a configured DNS setting, and a DNS server stores the IP address for every domain on the Internet. Malware changes the DNS settings on the local computer, redirecting users to a malicious site when they type a domain into the browser. Still, it could also affect operations on your computer, leaving you unable to use it.Īnother method used with pharming is DNS poisoning. Any bugs that affect the main functionality of the malware could render it ineffective at stealing data. Bugs can cause unintentional crashes, reboots, blue screens of death, and other computer problems.

BROWSER DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES SOFTWARE

The malware should run well, but threat authors rarely test their software and often introduce bugs into the software. The malware installation file must be executed first, and then it can run on the computer after every reboot. Since pharming attacks don’t rely on email, malware is used to redirect users and steal data.

This can be done by hijacking browser resources or detecting when users navigate to a particular financial site. The attacker uses a malicious search engine to redirect users to ad sites or a specific phishing website. Users rarely look at the domain in the browser’s address bar, so it’s an effective attack to steal user financial data, including their credentials.Īnother common example is redirecting users to another website when a search engine is entered into the browser.

BROWSER DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES CODE

When a user enters their bank domain into the browser address bar, the pharming code hijacks the user’s activity and redirects the browser to an attacker-controlled website with the same look and feel like the official bank account. In many cases, the attacker’s goal is to get financial data or the user’s authentication credentials, so the redirect triggers when the user navigates to a banking website.įor example, an attacker can use malicious code to monitor user web activity to trigger a redirect to a spoofed banking site. The attacker uses redirects or popups on the user’s desktop that display the phishing website in a masked link. Pharming involves hijacking the user’s browser settings or running a background process that automatically redirects users to a malicious site.

Browser definition and examples