Sp0t thę HomogIyph

There is now legal action pressing against domains that use tactics of impersonating the brand using homoglyphs. Wondering what a homoglyph is? The KnowBe4 Security Team at KnowBe4.com explained this situation in a recent release. A homoglyph is a letter or character that closely resembles another letter or character, and cybercriminals love to use homoglyphs to trick you into thinking a domain belongs to a trusted company.

For example, a scammer might use the number zero (0) in place of the capital letter “O.”

They might take a lowercase letter “l” in place of a capital letter “I.”

Using this strategy, the bad guys can attempt to fool people into believing they represent MICROSOFT as MlCR0S0FT. There are those that would take this method even further by using characters from other languages. Let’s say they use the Russian character “Ь” as the English letter “b.”

Don’t fall for these shenanigans. Remember the following:

Always be careful when you’re receiving an email you were not already expecting. This tactic can be used to impersonate any company or individual.

Before you click, always focus in to see if the destination of the link is legitimate. Pay attention to the characters in the URL.

If you’re asked to log into an account or online service, navigate to the official website and log in from there. This way, you ensure that you’re logging into the real website and not a phony look-alike.

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