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.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-632: Homograph Attack via Homoglyphs: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/632.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/632?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
How the attack unfolds
Explore
The attacker looks for a way in.
[Determine target website] The adversary first determines which website to impersonate, generally one that is trusted and receives a consistent amount of traffic.
1 technique
- Research popular or high traffic websites.
Experiment
They probe what they found.
[Impersonate trusted domain] In order to impersonate the trusted domain, the adversary needs to register the URL containing the homoglpyh character(s).
1 technique
- Register the Homograph domain.
Exploit
They carry out the attack.
[Deceive user into visiting domain] Finally, the adversary needs to deceive a user into visiting the Homograph domain.
1 technique
- 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.
Prerequisites
An adversary requires knowledge of popular or high traffic domains, that could be used to deceive potential targets.
Skills required
- Low skill
Adversaries must be able to register DNS hostnames/URL’s.
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Other | Other | Depending on the intention of the adversary, a successful Homograph attack can be leveraged to execute more complex attacks such as cross-site scripting or stealing account credentials. |
Mitigations
Authenticate all servers and perform redundant checks when using DNS hostnames.
Utilize browsers that can warn users if URLs contain characters from different character sets.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-1007 Insufficient Visual Distinction of Homoglyphs Presented to User
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 5.3CVE-2026-48760
Symfony is a PHP framework for web and console applications and a set of reusable PHP components. From 6.1.0 until 6.4.41, 7.4.13, and 8.0.13, UrlSanitizer::parse() rejected raw BiDi formatting characters but not percent-encoded forms and …
- 2.3CVE-2026-45064
Symfony is a PHP framework for web and console applications and a set of reusable PHP components. From 6.1.0-BETA1 until 6.4.40, 7.4.12, and 8.0.12, UrlSanitizer::parse() passes Unicode explicit-direction BiDi formatting characters through…
- 8.7CVE-2025-27611
base-x is a base encoder and decoder of any given alphabet using bitcoin style leading zero compression. Versions 4.0.0, 5.0.0, and all prior to 3.0.11, are vulnerable to attackers potentially deceiving users into sending funds to an unint…
- 5.4CVE-2025-0996
Inappropriate implementation in Browser UI in Google Chrome on Android prior to 133.0.6943.98 allowed a remote attacker to spoof the contents of the Omnibox (URL bar) via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 4.3CVE-2021-4221
If a domain name contained a RTL character, it would cause the domain to be rendered to the right of the path. This could lead to user confusion and spoofing attacks. <br>*This bug only affects Firefox for Android. Other operating systems …
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-616 Establish Rogue Location
Examples
An adversary sends an email, impersonating bankofamerica.com to a user stating that they have just received a…
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
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