Phishing attack uses Unicode characters in domains to clone known safe sites

Re:Phishing attack uses Unicode characters in domains to clo... by hartz on Saturday April 15, 2017 @09:02AM (#14120563)

I think it would be useful to implement some security against this at the registrar level (until a better fix is more broadly available). For example, if I'm registering "epic.com" (the ASCII version), the registrar could suggest that I also register "epic.com" (the Cyrillic version), or vice versa. This could at least help site owners avoid phishing attacks on their own domains.

Unfortunately, this would require all the big registrars to be on board for it to actually be effective.

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Re:Phishing attack uses Unicode characters in domains to clo... by syrrim on Saturday April 15, 2017 @09:33AM (#14120651)

In order to prevent anything, you would need to register every combination of latin and cyrilic. For a short domain like "epic" this constitutes 16 domains. For a 7 character domain it would be 128 domains. In either case it would be a heavy multiplier on the base cost of the domain.

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Re:Phishing attack uses Unicode characters in domains to clo... by MiddleEndian on Saturday April 15, 2017 @11:25AM (#14121112)

I don't think you're allowed to combine Latin and Cyrillic in a domain name. The issue is mainly that the two sets have identical looking characters.

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Re:Phishing attack uses Unicode characters in domains to clo... by loceng on Saturday April 15, 2017 @09:05AM (#14120572)

If you remind them there would be an increase in sales - especially if they point out the danger and then upsell the ASCII version - then they'd like implemenet it; at least they should A/B test it. Not great - but that's how I see them doing it.

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