As of 02/08/2021
How much difference can a dot make? Sadly, not much to your eyes perhaps. But it can make a huge huge difference when it comes to domain names. And this difference, can severely damage your cyber security.
As reported by arstechnica phishing scammers were using an impersonation of the domain name Brave.com. The hackers were using the domain, which appeared to be, Bravė.com. The website looked exactly similar to the original Brave.com. However when they proceeded to download the browser, the downloaded file was filled with malwares.
The website even had a TLD certificate or in common words the green lock sign that you usually see at the left of the website URL. So, how did they do so? Actually, the phishers were using Punycode. Punycode is a system in which normal ASCII characters can be used to represent different Unicodes. It was primarily intended to represent the stylised scripts of different languages. As in this case the domain they used was xn--brav-yva.com. This when converted to Unicode, would appear as Bravė.com.
So, from the next time when you visit a website, don’t be assured of the green lock sign. Look closely for the domain name. For, in domain names even a little difference, might not be as little as it seems!
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