Defeating pharming attacks at the client-side

International audienceWith the deployment of "always-connected" broadband Internet access, personal networks are a privileged target for attackers and DNS-based corruption. Pharming attacks - an enhanced version of phishing attacks - aim to steal users' credentials by redirecting them to a fraudulent login website, using DNS-based techniques that make the attack imperceptible to the end-user. In this paper, we define an advanced approach to alert the end-user in case of pharming attacks at the client-side. With a success rate over 95%, we validate a solution that can help differentiating legitimate from fraudulent login websites, based on a dual-step analysis (IP address check and webpage content comparison) performed using multiple DNS servers informatio

Pharming: análise dogmático-penal, em especial enquanto forma de lesão do património

Dissertação de mestrado em Direito e InformáticaA par dos constantes avanços tecnológico, que destroem barreiras antes entendidas por inultrapassáveis, surgem novas e sofisticadas possibilidades de perpetrar crimes através da Internet e por acesso a sistemas informáticos: a chamada Criminalidade Informática. De facto, são inúmeros os ataques que podem ser cometidos por esta via sem que o homem-médio possa estar a par de todos eles a fim de os conseguir combater efetivamente. Um desses ataques, cada vez com maior ocorrência, é o pharming, avanço em relação ao já mais conhecido phishing e que surgiu como forma a ultrapassar certos entraves inerentes a este último, trazendo assim uma maior perigosidade e dificuldade em apurar a correspondente responsabilidade. Porém, a principal lacuna está ainda em perceber com certeza os limites jurídico-penais de enquadramento, o que pode gerar nos nossos tribunais injustiças e dificuldades de tratamento, dados os contornos demasiado técnicoinformáticos que as mais ponderadas conclusões pressupõem. Por isso, visa este trabalho delimitar com rigor o enquadramento jurídicopenal a que se deve reconduzir tal fenómeno, pela previsibilidade de que a sua ocorrência seja cada vez mais frequente e também porque os nosso tribunais se pronunciaram até então apenas numa perspetiva civilística, imperando a necessidade de uma visão de natureza penal.Being aware of constant technological advances which destroy barriers before faced as unbreakable, nowadays we are faced with new and sophisticated possibilities of perpetrating crimes through the Internet by accessing computer systems: commonly called as Cybercrime. In fact, the atacks that can be commited through this way are so many that common-men can not be aware and defeat all of them effectively. Pharming is one of those atacks that have occurred more often – in order to overtake some obstacles well-knowned from phishing – and so it means a bigger threat that brings further challeges to find out legal responsability. Although, the main gap is to fully understand the criminal boundaries of frameworking due to pharming’s profile has such technical and informatical peculiarities that must be understood to take the most balanced conclusions. We have it in mind because these doubts could guide our courts to injustices and treatment difficulties. As such, the main goal of this work is to define precisely the legal framework: in first place because it is predictable the frequent occurence of this phenomenon in our society, and secondly due to the urgency of a correct criminal vision by our courts that has only pronounced themselves in a civilian perspective until now