Pharming

The other day I was a guest speaker for an infosec class, and the students were picking my brain on a bunch of different topics. They got onto the topic of phishing, then someone brought up pharming. I explained what it was, but then got caught off guard with this question:

"So how do we as consumers protect ourselves against this threat?"

I had to think on my feet and I winged it with a halfway answer. I said something like this (was a week or 2 ago)

"If there is a chance that the DNS server is comprimised, then you can bypass it altogether when you are accessing a web site. If you know the IP address of the server you want to go to, you can use that instead of the domain name you want to visit."

That's an unreliable workaround and I let them know that it's a new threat and that was just a quick answer. I can't think off the top of my head of something one can do to make sure the links in there favorites are actually going where they are supposed to. Your trust is in equipment that doesn't belong to you.

Anyone know a good answer?

Quote:

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So how do we as consumers protect ourselves against this threat

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As consumers all we can do is, be aware of the dangers, take steps to avoid them and trust in our defences. I do not realy see what else could be expected.

We have to deligate to our technology, which must involve trust. The alternative is to ditch the technology.

Well I don't think that my answer would be correct to say,but .........here goes
"At present I don't think that there is any other way to be safe from pharming but to remember the IP address of the server. We can have a program which has a set of IP address of all the websites we visit and when ever we visit a website it matches the IP address of the site to its Data base and if different it will send us a warning signal ........May be "
In other words I would also say the same as Soda said.