Re: IDN problem.... :(

From: Patrick Andries (patrick.andries@xcential.com)
Date: Mon Feb 14 2005 - 00:12:31 CST

  • Next message: Shawn Steele: "RE: IDN problem.... :("

    Asmus Freytag a écrit :

    > At 06:29 PM 2/12/2005, Christopher Fynn wrote:
    >
    >> If there were a list of homographs maybe they could be treated as
    >> aliases
    >> for the purpose of URLs and domain name registration - so IRAQ.COM
    >> with a Latin Q and IRAQ.COM with a Kurdish Q would point to the same
    >> address.
    >>
    >> Registering a name containing a character or characters in the
    >> homograph list would automatically get you all the variants too.
    >
    >
    >
    > If registration authorities could be convinced to use that to block
    > all 'look-alike' registrations, the playground for phishers would
    > shrink dramatically.

    True but aren't you depending on a lot of goodwill from many
    registration authorities?

    The IDN phishing problem seems mostly one linked to generic top-level
    domains (such as .com and .net) since the registration authorities for
    country-specific top-level domains (true I believe for France and Quebec
    at least) often require that the SLD name be registered as a corporation
    and those countries' old-fashioned corporation registrars will not
    accept foreign characters. Pity gTLD like ".com" have so much value,
    perhaps the IDN phishing problem could have been much simpler if these
    gTLD stayed Latin-based and the national TLD supported the scripts they
    deemed useful. Yes, a heretic thought. It is late. Ironically, I can
    reserve today labonté.com but not labonté.fr or labonté.ca. Just the
    opposite of what I found useful... Some registrars should wake up.

    > For ASCII, the confusables folding would fold 0 and O, 1 and l, as
    > well as l and I, which can be confused in many fonts.
    >
    > For Latin / Greek / Cyrillic the set of confusables includes many true
    > homographs, but there are many more for the other scripts.

    Are you considering such set of confusables for
    Latin/Greek/Cyrillic/Tifinagh/Deseret/API/Old
    Italic/Cherokee/Coptic/..., how large a set then? Maintaining such a
    list of universal confusables seems like a lot of work, and by some
    aspects very subjective.

    P.A.



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Feb 14 2005 - 00:14:15 CST