nanog mailing list archives

Re: Mozilla Implements TLD Whitelist for Firefox in Response to IDN Homogr aphs Spoofing


From: Florian Weimer <fw () deneb enyo de>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:04:13 +0200


* Jason Sloderbeck:

Yes, it's recognized by Mozilla and others as the job of the Internet
Architecture Board (in particular, the IAB-IDN group) to make a final
decision on how to deal with homographs.

Homographs are a classical example of a PR attack.  It's a complete
non-issue.  In practice, people don't use domain names to assess the
credibility of web sites.  1/l/I and 0/O are homographs as well, and
the Internet hasn't collapsed as a result.

The really stunning thing about the whole mess is that nobody seems to
grasp that technically, TLDs are not in a position to restrict name
server operators to any character sets in the domain names they use.
After all, I can add any domain name I want to my zone files.


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