COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-632

Homograph Attack via Homoglyphs

An adversary registers a domain name containing a homoglyph, leading the registered domain to appear the same as a trusted domain. A homograph attack leverages the fact that different characters among various character sets look the same to the user. Homograph attacks must generally be combined with other attacks, such as phishing attacks, in order to direct Internet traffic to the adversary-controlled destinations.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

Low

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary registers a domain name containing a homoglyph, leading the registered domain to appear the same as a trusted domain. A homograph attack leverages the fact that different characters among various character sets look the same to the user. Homograph attacks must generally be combined with other attacks, such as phishing attacks, in order to direct Internet traffic to the adversary-controlled destinations.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

1

Explore

Determine target website

The adversary first determines which website to impersonate, generally one that is trusted and receives a consistent amount of traffic.

Techniques used

  • Research popular or high traffic websites.
2

Experiment

Impersonate trusted domain

In order to impersonate the trusted domain, the adversary needs to register the URL containing the homoglpyh character(s).

Techniques used

  • Register the Homograph domain.
3

Exploit

Deceive user into visiting domain

Finally, the adversary needs to deceive a user into visiting the Homograph domain.

Techniques used

  • Execute a phishing attack and send a user an e-mail convincing the to click on a link leading the user to the malicious domain.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • An adversary requires knowledge of popular or high traffic domains, that could be used to deceive potential targets.

Skills required

  • Low: Adversaries must be able to register DNS hostnames/URL’s.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Other

Affected scopes: Other

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Authenticate all servers and perform redundant checks when using DNS hostnames.
2
Utilize browsers that can warn users if URLs contain characters from different character sets.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
An adversary sends an email, impersonating bankofamerica.com to a user stating that they have just received a new deposit and to click the given link to confirm the deposit. However, the link the in email is bankofamerica.com, where the 'a' and 'e' characters are Cyrillic and not ASCII, instead of bankofamerica.com (all ASCII), which the user clicks after carefully reading the URL, making sure that typosquatting and soundsquatting attacks are not being leveraged against them. The user is directed to the adversary's website, which appears as if it is the legitimate bankofamerica.com login page. The user thinks they are logging into their account, but have actually just given their bankofamerica.com credentials to the adversary. The adversary can now use the user's legitimate bankofamerica.com credentials to log into the user's account and steal any money which may be in the account. Homograph vulnerability allows an adversary to impersonate a trusted domain by leveraging homoglyphs and tricking a user into visiting the malicious website to steal user credentials. See also: CVE-2012-0584 CVE-2009-0652 CVE-2005-0233 CVE-2005-0234 CVE-2005-0235 CVE-2005-0236 CVE-2005-0237 CVE-2005-0238
CAPEC-632: Homograph Attack via Homoglyphs — DayBreach Saldırı Sözlüğü · DayBreach