[At-Large] IDN Variants in the market place

Fri Jul 20 19:34:57 UTC 2018

Hi,

"at least in ASCII space" still can't work. Innumerable strings contain
characters that, in turn, have look-alikes in other character sets, many in
more than one. To get a sense of scale, try "aardvark" first; EVERY
character has a potential substitute. Also please remember the row around
".bg" in Cyrillic. (Again, barring correction from someone more
knowledgeable.)

Alejandro Pisanty

On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Sivasubramanian M <6.Internet at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 12:19 AM Alejandro Pisanty <apisanty at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Barry,
>>
>> spot on, plus the idea of a list of forbidden strings appears to be pure
>> lunacy in this context.
>>
>
> All strings are potentially an attack for any substitution of any
>> character by any IDN look-alike character. The list would contain a couple
>> zillion names and as you say, many could be legtimate. To complicate things
>> further, an ASCII "A" could be used in an homograph attack by substituting
>> for a Greek or Cyrillic "A" as well.
>>
>> I may be missing something and would study a correction though.
>>
>
> for the Registries, at least in the ASCII space, to volunteer to feed
> their respective list of harmful names
>
> You missed 'at least in ASCII space'.
>
>
>> Alejandro Pisanty
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:37 PM, <bzs at theworld.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On July 19, 2018 at 15:48 6.Internet at gmail.com (Sivasubramanian M)
>>> wrote:
>>>  > Please take a look at the attached screenshot of a domainer's offer
>>> to sell
>>>  > single character IDNs, for instance an IDN variant (lookalike) of the
>>> ASCII
>>>  > character X, which sets a harmful trend. This is an issue if
>>> confusability.
>>>
>>> The general term for this is "homograph attack" or specifically "IDN
>>> homograph attack", where "attack" may be in the eye of the beholder:
>>>
>>>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack
>>>
>>> and has been the subject of much discussion over recent years and
>>> little resolution.
>>>
>>> I believe one popular proposal is browser support which either
>>> visually flags such IDNs or displays the punycode alongside which is
>>> an ASCII represenation and should make obvious that this not what one
>>> might suspect.
>>>
>>> For example (from this wikipedia page): xn--bcher-kva.tld indicating
>>> an umlauted 'u' is in there but importantly that it's not just
>>> bucher.tld.
>>>
>>>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
>>>
>>> There's still the problem with intent. Could I legitimately offer for
>>> sale the strings with and without the umlaut? I think that's generally
>>> considered acceptable.
>>>
>>> Caveat emptor?
>>>
>>>  >
>>>  > I understand that the Registries (are required to?) maintain a list
>>> of harmful
>>>  > names for their TLDs, but there is no common minimal list of harmful
>>> names. One
>>>  > possible way to achieve this is for the Registries, at least in the
>>> ASCII
>>>  > space, to volunteer to feed their respective list of harmful names
>>> into a
>>>  > common Registry Stakeholder database, and then draw up a common
>>> minimum list of
>>>  > harmful domain names that any Registry could avoid registering.
>>>  >
>>>  > If At-Large could shape this as a workable suggestion, it could
>>> formally go to
>>>  > the Registry Stakeholders.
>>>  >
>>>  > Sivasubramanian M
>>>  > x[DELETED ATTACHMENT Screenshot_20180719-152932~2.png, PNG image]
>>>  > _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>> --
>>>         -Barry Shein
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>>      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
>> Facultad de Química UNAM
>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=UNAM+Av.+Universidad+3000&entry=gmail&source=g>
>> Av. Universidad 3000
>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=UNAM+Av.+Universidad+3000&entry=gmail&source=g>,
>> 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
>> +52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
>> +525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475
>> Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
>> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
>> Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/
>> 22285/4A106C0C8614
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty
>> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org
>> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
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>

-- 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
     Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Facultad de Química UNAM
Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
+52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
+525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475
Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
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