{{Header}} {{#seo: |description=Video Drafts for {{project_name_long}} }}
Beware of URL Impersonation: How Scammers Trick You with Lookalike LettersImagine you're visiting what you believe to be your bank's website. You verify the web address in the URL bar, and it appears to be exactly as expected. However, you're actually on a fake website created by scammers. This fake website looks identical to your bank's website, but it's designed to trick you into revealing sensitive information such as your password, credit card number, or other personal data. This exact attack is not only possible but has been demonstrated by a security researcher using apple.com. Surprisingly, this attack cannot be spotted with the human eye by looking at the link. The URL clearly shows "apple.com," but instead of the sleek, polished brand website, you'll be greeted, luckily, by a friendly warning message from the researcher instead of a scammer. The link to the researchers attack demonstration and further information can be found in the video description. [bumper : How the scam works] Scammers create fake websites that look and function exactly like the real ones. But for their scam to work, they also often create URLs that resemble those of well-known brands to trick users into being careless. They use "lookalike letters" called "homoglyphs" from different languages to replace English letters and create "lookalike words" called "homographs". For example, they might use a Greek "a" instead of an English "a" to create a fake homograph that makes the browser render "apple.com". However, instead of the legitimate website, users will be visiting a domain that the attacker controls. This is how they deceive users and trick them into revealing sensitive information such as their passwords and 2FA logins. Fortunately, you can avoid falling victim to this attack. Internal to the browser, the plain text version of apple.com is converted by the browser into a strange letter salad, called punycode, because URLs don't allow foreign characters. If your browser would show this punycode you would clearly see it's not the real apple.com (
* fake apple.com security researcher demonstration website: https://www.xn--80ak6aa92e.com/ * https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/unicode-Punycode-phishing-attack.html * https://www.xudongz.com/blog/2017/idn-phishing/ * https://forums.whonix.org/t/very-hard-to-notice-phishing-scam-firefox-tor-browser-url-not-showing-real-domain-name-homograph-attack-punycode/8373 * https://twitter.com/Whonix/status/1189513958488711169 * https://mothereff.in/punycode * https://www.jamf.com/blog/punycode-attacks/ * https://github.com/mathiasbynens/punycode.js * https://www.gnu.org/software/libidn/libidn2/manual/html_node/Invoking-idn2.html * https://supertekboy.com/2020/07/15/url-impersonation-homoglyph-attacks/ * https://github.com/em-te/webextension-no-homographs phishing,scam,scammer,homoglyph,homograph,homoglyph attack,homograph attack,url impersonation,lookalike letters,unicode,punycode== Vid #001 : OOPS! They tricked me to install MALWARE! Clipboard Hidden Text Attacks explained ==