What best describes phishing versus pharming?

• A. Phishing is fraudulent communication to steal credentials; Pharming redirects users to fake sites by altering DNS or hosts.
• B. Phishing and pharming are the same thing.
• C. Phishing occurs when sites are wrongly authenticated; Pharming occurs when there is a data breach.
• D. Phishing is limited to email, while pharming is not.

Answer: (A)

Phishing and pharming are two separate ways criminals try to steal your credentials. Phishing is about a fraudulent message designed to trick you into revealing your username and password. It often comes as email, text, or a message on social media that nudges you to click a link or enter information on a fake page.

Pharming, on the other hand, happens behind the scenes to direct you to a fake site, even if you type the correct address. This can be done by messing with DNS records or altering your computer’s hosts file so that legitimate-looking sites actually point to attacker-controlled servers.

So the best description is that phishing uses deceptive communication to steal credentials, while pharming redirects you to a counterfeit site via technical manipulation of DNS or local routing. The other statements mix up the methods or broaden them incorrectly—for example, phishing isn’t limited to email, pharming isn’t simply a data breach, and they aren’t the same thing.