@rysiek @silmathoron @xpil how about just adding a notice “this URL contains non-ascii characters which might look like ascii characters” needs the users to know what ascii characters are though
Conversation
Notices
-
/xarvos/ (xarvos@nixnet.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:22:53 UTC /xarvos/ -
Rysiekúr Memesson (rysiek@mastodon.technology)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:22:52 UTC Rysiekúr Memesson @xarvos @silmathoron @xpil that obviously makes all IDN websites immediately look suspicious, even if they are completely innocent.
Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this. -
Remco.py (remcoboerma@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:43 UTC Remco.py Assuming that most attacks are based on trusted (by the user) domains,
Assuming that a centralized option is not preferable (for all good reasons set out elsewhere in this thread),
Assuming that taking user browsing preferences are important,
Given that the total of glyph combinations is too large too handle effectively on large scale, -
Remco.py (remcoboerma@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:43 UTC Remco.py @rysiek @xpil
What if a browser saves a graphic representation of every domain visible in the address bar (as the user sees it) , and compares it graphically (with the prior recorded domain representation images) when a domain is about to be opened (as in, seen by the user in the address bar) and warns when similarity is above a given (yet to be discovered) threshold AND the domain names in unicode don't match (or differ enough based on textual difference)Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this. -
Rysiekúr Memesson (rysiek@mastodon.technology)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:44 UTC Rysiekúr Memesson @TerryHancock @xarvos @silmathoron @xpil sure, we could have some rules like that, and they would be *somewhat* effective.
They would not solve the problem in general though.
Doesn't mean we should not try them, of course.
-
Remco.py (remcoboerma@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:44 UTC Remco.py @rysiek @xpil apparently you have spent much time thinking about this problem, and I'm completely new, but intrigued. Now I can't think of catch all solution but maybe this is something that might help a little.
-
Rysiekúr Memesson (rysiek@mastodon.technology)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:45 UTC Rysiekúr Memesson @TerryHancock @xarvos @silmathoron @xpil what about "émigré.tld" then.
-
Terry Hancock (terryhancock@mastodon.art)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:45 UTC Terry Hancock That's all extended latin, though, right? And the accents are visible.
Not like having 'е' and 'і' instead of 'e' and 'i'.
Or even 'г' instead of 'r', though you can technically see that one.
Thing is, Cyrillic and Greek character sets are generally used independently, which is why they have confusable characters in the first place. It's pretty rare to have a legit need to mix Cyrillic or Greek characters in with Latin.
-
Terry Hancock (terryhancock@mastodon.art)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:46 UTC Terry Hancock A list of confusable-unicode characters would be kind of handy, in general. Surely there must be one somewhere by now?
A suspicious case would be a URL that has characters from such a list, mixed in with other characters from the alternate set.
I.e. if you encounter a Cyrillic 'а' in a URL composed mostly of Latin characters (or any mix of the two, really), that's probably suspicious.
A legit Cyrillic domain name probably wouldn't do that (I think?).
-
/xarvos/ (xarvos@nixnet.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:27:47 UTC /xarvos/ @rysiek @silmathoron @xpil come to think of it, the reverse attack might be possible too (e.g. having latin letter a amidst cyrillic characters). maybe we’d need to list lookalike characters comprehensively
-
Remco.py (remcoboerma@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:28:03 UTC Remco.py @rysiek @xpil
vv would appear like w and score bad, qg could still be a nightmare depending on the attack/use, cirrilic users would less likely be tricked in clicking on latin codes and the other way around, there's no ownership or who came first issues, but attacks on established domain names (based on user trust) could hopefully more easily be spotted. -
Rysiekúr Memesson (rysiek@mastodon.technology)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 04:28:03 UTC Rysiekúr Memesson @remcoboerma @xpil *and* it's all based on particular user's past browsing history, not some dreamed-up list of global rules, nor on some (inevitably biased) "AI".
Nice!
Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
-