Homograph Phishing Attacks: Explained

Introduction

Can you spot the difference between, https://www.tracesecurity.com/ and https://www.trαcesecurity.com/? If you were able to spot the difference, great job! Homograph attacks are a phenetic reader's worst nightmare.

Homograph attacks, also known as homoglyph attacks, are a type of sneaky cyber deception where attackers exploit the visual similarities between characters from different alphabets to create fake domain names that look the same as legitimate domain names.

How It Works

There are a few things to keep in mind when understanding how Homograph Phishing Attacks work:

Character Similarity

Character similarity can be hard to spot. Many characters from different writing systems look very similar. For example, the Latin letter “a” and the Cyrillic letter “α” look almost identical. Attackers use these similarities to replace characters in a legitimate domain name with similar-looking characters from other scripts.

Domain Registration

An example of domain registration is when the attacker registers a domain name using these visually similar characters. For instance, instead of “facebook.com,” (using Latin characters) they might register “fαcebook.com” (using Cyrillic characters).

Phishing

Phishing and other similar attacks are common ways that the bad actor may try to trick the end user. The attacker will send phishing emails that include a fake domain that could allow unauthorized access or even link to a fake website that looks like the legitimate one. When users visit these sites, they might unknowingly enter sensitive information, such as passwords or credit card details.

Punycode

Punycode is used to support international domain names by transcoding text with special characters. The Domain Name System (DNS) uses Punycode, which allows non-ASCII characters to be represented in ASCII. ASCII is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. This encoding method may be exploited in homograph attacks to create deceptive domain names that appear legitimate.

User Awareness

User awareness and training is paramount for employees both at work and at home. Modern browsers have some protections against homograph attacks, such as warning users about suspicious domains. However, it’s still crucial for users to be on the lookout and double-check URLs, especially when entering sensitive information.

How You Can Protect Yourself

Homograph attacks can be tricky, but there are some effective tips and tricks to protect yourself:

1. Be Cautious with Links and avoid clicking on links in emails or messages from unknown or suspicious sources. The better route to take is to manually type in URLs to your browser or use bookmarks.

2. Regularly updating your browser is important because modern browsers have built-in defenses against homograph attacks.

3. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to add an extra layer of security. This makes it harder for attackers to gain access to your accounts even if they are successful in tricking you into giving them your credentials.

4. Awareness is key! Learning about homograph attacks and educating others to recognize suspicious URLs that might look legitimate but contain deceptive characters can help keep you and your business safe.

5. Be aware of URLs that start with “xn–”, which indicates the use of Punycode. This coding is used to represent Unicode characters in ASCII format and can help identify potential homograph attacks.

6. Implement endpoint security solutions that detect and block malicious websites.

Conclusion

Homograph phishing attacks are used to exploit visual similarities between characters to deceive users. This makes awareness and vigilance crucial. By understanding these attack vectors and implementing protective measures, individuals and organizations can significantly reduce their risk of falling victim to these cyber threats.