Major domain name bug allowed hackers to register malicious domains

Thanks to a bug at some of the internet’s largest domain registrars, bad actors were able to register malicious domains until just late last month.

If I told you to click this on this URL, amɑzon.com, and login for a great limited time deal over at Amazon, would you notice it wasn’t really Amazon’s domain name? 

Hover over it, give it a click. You’ll find that it actually directs you to xn—amzon-1jc.com. Why? Look closely and you’ll notice that the second “a” and the “o” aren’t actually the letters “a” and “o” from the Latin alphabet, which is what’s used in the English language.

It’s not supposed to be possible to register these domain names due to the malicious attacks they could be used for. Many web browsers change the characters in the URL from Unicode to Punycode, as seen in the earlier example, for that very reason. Read more...