Internet Fishing and Farming

In a recent issue of Essential Magazine I wrote an article drawing readers attention to a type of internet banking fraud called phishing. This is where you are sent an email apparently from your bank asking you to confirm you account details and passwords. Even though these emails look genuine it is now widely known that they are scams. The banks and financial institutions confirm that they would never ask for this information. It is quite easy to avoid being caught by a fraudster phishing: just ignore the emails.

A potentially worse problem has arrived with its new name as well: Pharming. This is where an internet user types into his or her browser the web address of their bank and instead of being directed to the correct web page they are directed to the fraudsters page where they innocently enter their account details and password.

To understand how this happens you have to know a little about how the internet works. All the computers or servers on the Internet have an address. It is called an IP address and it consists of a set of four number separated by dots. In order to make the Internet more user friendly the Domain Name System (DNS) was created

The DNS is the phone book of the internet. It is a lookup table of names and numbers. For example if you want to view the Essential Magazine web page you would type in to your web browser www.essentialmagazine.com The DNS would look up the IP address of this domain (195.102.241.20) and then sent a request to the server at that address for the web pages. Copies of the DNS tables are held at various locations on the Internet by ISP's. The have to be updated on a regular basis. A little program as part of the operating system of your own computer tells your web browser which table to look at first. If your computer was infected by a special virus which caused your computer to look at another table with incorrect information, you could be directed to a false website. This possibility appears to have become a reality and has been called pharming.

At another level is the possible virus infection of a percentage of the 1.3 million DNS servers on the internet which are maintained by ISP's. You will rely on others to make sure their security is up to scratch so that what you think you see is what you get.

A recent virus called "P2Load-A" performed a pharming attack and caused users to look at a false Google which returned false results driving business to the virus creators' websites. On another notable occasion last year a German teanager hijacked the ebay.de domain.

The term pharming is controversial within the industry. At a recent conference organized by the Antiphishing Working Group, Phillip Hallam-Baker denounced the term as "a marketing neologism designed to convince banks to buy a new set of security services." However U.S. Vermont Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy is taking it seriously, he has introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005, a bill that proposes a five-year prison sentence and/or fine for individuals who execute phishing attacks and use information garnered through online fraud such as phishing and pharming to commit crimes such as identity theft.

How do you protect yourself from this? The answer is back to having a good and up to date AntiVirus program on your computer, and not opening email attachments from unknown sources. If the bank's website looks strange it might be a clue but this try of fraud is by professional criminals who go to great lengths to create a replica website. Perhaps after you have entered password you will find you are not able to view your account details. Check from another computer. Contact you bank if you have suspicions.

At present according to Google there are 'only' 810.000 pages on the Internet that include the word "pharming". A number sure to rise in the future. For comparison "phishing" returns 18.500.000 pages and common or garden "fraud" returns 120.000.000!

Some of the towns on the coast such as Estepona have paid homage for years to two Saints San Isidro and Virgen del Carmen the patrons of the farmers and the fishermen. Lets hope they will offer the residents some protection against phishers and pharmers.