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.

Homoglyph Attack

Low
Medium

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.
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).
Register the Homograph domain.

3
Exploit
[Deceive user into visiting domain] Finally, the adversary needs to deceive a user into visiting the Homograph domain.
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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2015-11-09

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2018-07-31
Updated Attack_Phases

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2019-04-04
Updated Related_Attack_Patterns

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2020-12-17
Updated Related_Attack_Patterns

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2022-09-29
Updated Related_Attack_Patterns

CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
2023-01-24
Updated Related_Weaknesses