homographic attack definition

Definition of homographic attack : noun

  1. A form of deception that uses visually similar but distinct characters to register a malicious domain so that it might easily be mistaken for a legitimate one. A simple form of homographic deception might substitute a numeral "1" for a lowercase "l" (or vice versa). More sophisticated homographic attacks might use characters from different language sets that are difficult to distinguish visually, like the Latin "o," the Greek omicron ("ο"), or the Cyrillc "о." Homographic attacks are commonly used in phishing attacks to spoof an email or destination domain.