Warning issued over new domain system
4 March 2005
A system to make it easier to create website addresses using alphabets like Cyrillic could open up sites to scammers, the UK Internet Forum (UKIF) has warned.
The Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) system has recently been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force, having been in development for years
The UKIF has warned that the system could enable scammers to create fake sites more easily by registering names that look like those of legitimate companies but direct users to fake websites that aim to trick people into divulging sensitive personal or financial information, dubbed phishing attacks.
So-called ASCII codes are used to represent European languages but for other languages a hybrid of a system called Unicode is used. The new will allow people to register domains that combine alphabets. A fake Paypal.com has already been registered with net domain giant Verisign to prove a point about the new IDN system.
Stephen Dyer, director of UKIF, said: "Although the IDN problem is well known in technical circles, the commercial world is totally unaware how easily their websites can be faked."
"It is important to alert users that there is a new and invisible and almost undetectable way of diverting them to what looks like a perfectly genuine site."
Mr Dyer outlined a number of solutions, such as enabling browsers to spot domains that use mixed characters and display them in different colours as a warning to users, and introducing IDN-disabled browsers.
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