homographtámadások

Homograph attacks are a type of security threat where attackers register domain names that look visually similar to legitimate ones by using characters from different alphabets that have the same visual representation. For example, a domain like "apple.com" could be mimicked by an attacker using a Cyrillic 'a' which looks identical to the Latin 'a', resulting in a domain like "арple.com". When a user sees this domain, especially in a web browser address bar, it can be very difficult to distinguish from the real one.

The primary goal of a homograph attack is to deceive users into visiting a malicious website. Once on the fake site, users might be tricked into entering sensitive information like usernames, passwords, or credit card details, believing they are interacting with a trusted service. This is a form of phishing, leveraging the visual similarity of characters to bypass user vigilance.

To mitigate homograph attacks, many web browsers have implemented measures such as restricting the use of homoglyphs in domain names or displaying the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) in its Punycode form when it contains non-ASCII characters. Punycode is a special encoding that represents Unicode characters using only the basic Latin alphabet, making visually similar characters appear distinct in the address bar. Users can also enhance their security by carefully checking the domain name in the address bar, paying close attention to any unusual characters or slight variations from known legitimate websites.