Cybercriminals use punycode to create domain names that look visually like trusted destinations.
Quite often, scammers preying on people’s personal and financial information register domain names that look like Google, Gmail, bank and airline domains, popular consumer brands and anything of high traffic volume.
Punycode targets – source: Wandera
Google is working on a version of its Chrome browser that will use an intelligent warning system that’d predict any illegitimate web sites, warning the visitors about such a catastrophic visit.
The upcoming Chrome AI will tackle the growth of so-called homograph attacks, which exploit the web browser’s current method of handling non-English characters.
Haris Kampouris, head of threat research at Wandera, warned about such homograph attacks abusing punycode technology:
“We are still seeing a constant rise on this type of scam or phishing domain. That’s likely to be due to the plentiful combinations that can be used.”
For more information on the new Chrome project, head over to Wandera.com.
