How to Prevent Against Homograph Phishing Attacks

Firefox users can follow below-mentioned steps to manually apply temporarily mitigation:

Type about:config in address bar and press enter.
Type Punycode in the search bar.
Browser settings will show parameter titled: network.IDN_show_punycode, double-click or right-click and select Toggle to change the value from false to True.

Unfortunately, there is no similar setting available in Chrome or Opera to disable Punycode URL conversions manually, so Chrome users have to wait for next few weeks to get patched Stable 58 release.

Although, there are some third-party Chrome extensions/add-ons available on App Store that users can install to get alerts every time they came across any website with Unicode characters in the domain.

Meanwhile, one of the best ways to protect yourself from homograph attacks is to use a good password manager that comes with browser extensions, which automatically enter in your login credentials for the actual domains to which they are linked.

So, whenever you came across any domain which looks like legitimate "apple.com" or "amazon.com" but actually is not, your password manager software will detect it and will not automatically authenticate you to that phishing site.

Moreover, Internet users are always advised to manually type website URLs in the address bar for important sites like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or banking websites, instead of clicking any link mentioned on some website or email, to prevent against such attacks.

• Tweet
• Share
• Share
• Share
• Share