While there are several ways to pharm, the primary method stems from an older attack called DNS cache poisoning in which an attack is made against the Internet naming system that allows users to enter meaningful names for websites (such as www.bank.co.uk) rather than a series of numbers (such as 192. 168. 1. 1.).The naming system relies upon DNS servers to handle the conversion of the letter-based website names, which are easily recalled by people into the machine-understandable digits that whisk users to the website of their choice.When a pharmer mounts a successful DNS cache poisoning attack, they are effectively changing the rules of how traffic flows for that portion of the Internet. It is from this practice that pharmers found their namesake – herding large numbers of Internet users to a bogus site rather than planting the ‘bait’ of the phishers.