Typical severity: Very High. Likelihood of attack: High. A pharming attack occurs when the victim is fooled into entering sensitive data into supposedly trusted locations, such as an online bank site or a trading platform. An attacker can impersonate these supposedly trusted sites and have the victim be directed to their site rather than the originally intended one. Pharming does not require script injection or clicking on malicious links for the attack to succeed.
All sensitive information must be handled over a secure connection. | Known vulnerabilities in DNS or router software or in operating systems must be patched as soon as a fix has been released and tested. | End users must ensure that they provide sensitive information only to websites that they trust, over a secure connection with a valid certificate issued by a well-known certificate authority.