Security News > 2021 > July > Microsoft Cracks Down on Malicious Homoglyph Domains
Microsoft on Monday announced that it secured a court order to take down numerous malicious homoglyph domains that a criminal group registered to impersonate legitimate sites of various businesses, predominantly located in North America.
Leveraging similarities between alpha-numeric characters, cybercriminals register homoglyph domains that closely resemble those of legitimate businesses, but are instead under the control of the unauthorized parties.
The crime group that Microsoft took action against registered close to 20 malicious homoglyph domains, mainly mimicking the legitimate sites of small businesses in North America, across multiple industries.
The attackers leveraged the fraudulent domains and stolen credentials to unlawfully access and monitor accounts, gather intelligence, and impersonate Microsoft customers to trick victims into sending money to them.
In one instance, the attackers hijacked legitimate Office 365 e-mail communication to send an impersonation email from a homoglyph domain and convince the victim that the message came from a known trusted source.
"The action will further allow us to diminish the criminals' capabilities and obtain additional evidence to undertake further disruptions inside and outside court," Microsoft says, adding that the use of homoglyph domains is trending up among cybercriminals.