Microsoft Secures Court Order To Take Down Malicious Homoglyph Domains

Microsoft has secured a court order to take down several malicious “homoglyph” domains that were used to impersonate Office 365 customers and commit fraud. In orthography and typography, a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes, characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar.

These so-called “homoglyph” domains exploit the similarities of some letters to create deceptive domains that appear legitimate. For example, using an uppercase “I” and a lowercase “l” (e.g. MICROSOFT.COM vs. MlCROSOFT.COM).

Microsoft confirmed in a blog post published Monday that a judge in the Eastern District of Virginia issued a court order requiring domain registrars to disable service on the malicious domains, which include “thegiaint.com” and “nationalsafetyconsuiting.com,” which were used to impersonate its customers.