[Ads-l] homoglyph (2007)

[dave@wilton.net]

Not in the OED. 
 
A homoglyph is a grapheme that resembles but is distinct from another. Example: the Cyrillic ‹ α › and the Latin ‹ a ›. They are often used in phishing scams to create fake URLs as computers will read the Unicode characters as distinct while a human might treat them as alloglyphs. (Which is yet another term, but one I didn't try to date.)
 
 
Goretsky, Aryeh. Comment on thread “invalid boot.ini.” Scot’s Newsletter Forums, 12 December 2007. [ https://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?/topic/20049-invalid-bootini/ ]( https://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?/topic/20049-invalid-bootini/ )

"Hello,Are you able to compare a working and invalid boot.ini file? Bear in mind that a single-byte change like a homoglyph (a character which looks like another character, but is different) or an encoding issue with the text (e.g., ASCII versus Unicode) in the file could render it 'unreadable' by the Windows kernel.Regards,Aryeh Goretsky"
 
 
Here's one in the context of an online scam:
 
Schrott, Urban. “Warning Over Latest Phishing Scam to Hit What’s App Users.” Leitrim Observer (Ireland), 15 June 2018. [ https://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/lifestyle/warning-over-latest-phishing-scam-to-hit-whats-app-users-8316907 ]( https://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/lifestyle/warning-over-latest-phishing-scam-to-hit-whats-app-users-8316907 )

"The message is followed by a link from which to obtain the promised item. Looking closer at the link in the message, there’s no dot above the short vertical line that should be the letter 'i'. This is a homoglyph (often referred to as homograph) attack, incorporating a link that looks legitimate but is actually spoofed by replacing one character with another that looks the same to the unwary eye."
 
 
And there is this Guardian article from today that uses a homoglyph in the article title:
 
Osbourne, Hilary. “Reαd carefully: how to spot—and avoid—a homoglyph attack.” Guardian, 20 September 2026. [ https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/sep/20/how-to-spot-avoid-homoglyph-attack-scam ]( https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/sep/20/how-to-spot-avoid-homoglyph-attack-scam ) 
 

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