Pharming

DNS Cache poisoning

DNS Cache poisoning is an attack where a name server is tricked into adding or modifying cached DNS data with incorrect and malicious data. There are several forms of DNS (cache) poisoning. One attack that is recently causing problems is associated with phishing and is called pharming.

Dave Piscitello wrote a helpful and entertaining article on how DNS cache poisoning is related to Pharming, subtitled Someone's poisoned the water hole!

An excerpt from the article appears below, with a link to the complete work:

If you have children, you'll probably recall the pull-string figure Wild West Woody from the Pixar movie, Toy Story. Among the handful of fun phrases Woody would say when you pulled his string were, "There's a snake in my boot!" and "Someone's poisoned the water hole!" If Hasbro were to release a "virtual" Woody today, he'd warn us of a similarly serious threat, DNS cache poisoning. The analogy is simple: in the Wild West, a poisoned well spelled disaster; on the Internet, a poisoned DNS cache is no less a calamity.

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