Internationalized Domain Name - ASCII Spoofing Concerns

ASCII Spoofing Concerns

The use of Unicode in domain names makes it potentially easier to spoof web sites visited by World Wide Web users as the visual representation of an IDN string in a web browser may appear identical to another, depending on the font used. For example, Unicode character U+0430, Cyrillic small letter a, can look identical to Unicode character U+0061, Latin small letter a, used in English. As a concrete example, using Cyrillic letters a, Ie (U+0435, looking essentially identical to Latin letter e), Byelorussian-Ukrainian I (U+0456, essentially identical to Latin letter i), Er (U+0440, essentially identical to Latin letter p), we form the URL wіkіреdіа.org, which is virtually indistinguishable from the visual representation of the legitimate wikipedia.org (possibly depending on fonts).

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