Domain Registration Related News
Domain name sytem offers back door to
criminals
March 2005
A recently approved system that allows
countries to create web addresses using a mixture
of European and non-European languages could open
a back door for scammers warned the UK Internet
Forum (UKIF).
People are directed to websites by the real name
rather than as websites internet protocol address,
which is a series of numbers. European languages
use what are called ASCII codes to create 'real
name' web addresses and other languages such as
Russian, Greek or Chinese use a code called
Unicode. The Internationalised Domain Names (IDN)
system now combines these.
The problem for consumers is some of the letters
in the alphabets that use Unicode is they resemble
those used in European alphabets. The worry is
criminals will use a mixture of these codes to
register websites that look like those that belong
to legitimate companies and direct users to the
fake sites. Steve Dyer, director of UKIF told
Computeractive there were real concerns about
misuse of this by criminals. "The Russian 'A'
looks just the same as the English 'A' although it
means something different. A criminal could
register a domain name using a mixture of ASCII
and Unicode that is indistinguishable to the
ordinary surfer from the genuine site.
|