In both pharming and phishing attacks an attacker can create websites that look similar to legitimate sites with the intent of collecting personal identifiable information from its victims. What is th

Pharming and phishing are distinct attack types - pharming uses technical DNS or hosts-file manipulation while phishing relies on social engineering via deceptive emails or messages.

In a pharming attack the attacker poisons DNS records or modifies the victim's local hosts file so that a legitimate domain name silently resolves to a malicious IP address. The victim types a valid URL yet is transparently delivered to a fraudulent site, requiring no deceptive link or user click error. This silent technical redirection is the defining characteristic that separates pharming from phishing.

It is pharming, not phishing, that redirects victims through host-configuration modification - phishing depends on deceptive communications to trick users into following malicious links voluntarily.

Phishing is explicitly a social engineering technique that manipulates user behavior through deceptive messages, so characterizing both attacks as purely technical is factually incorrect.