Re: [technology taskforce] [At-Large] Google Developers : Humans can't read URLs. How can we fix it? - HTTP 203
Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Baruch <apisan@unam.mx> wrote: "is this just one more iteration of "domain names will cease to be relevant soon" or is it a move or trend that will definitely undermine their importance and therefore also change the markets?" I think no, this is not an iteration about domain names becoming irrelevant. The discussion focused on how to ensure browser users can identify what domain they are visiting so IMO, it strengthens the use of domain names by having users trust the domain they are visiting. The challenge as I see it is with the prevalence of many new TLDs, the risk of phishing and malware attacks are higher where bad persons try to trick persons to either: - go to bad persons' website(s) at domains pretending to be another organisation/service in order to get user login credentials to such organisations/services or - open links to malware files and become infected. So typically, bad persons would use typos that look similiar to the legitimate domain or add a few characters before or after the 2nd level domain So for example.com, there could be exannple.com , examp1e.com, eexamples.com and examples.com . With more TLDs and wider use of ccTLDs, bad persons could also do things like examples.xyz, examp1e.tv and so on. With longer URLs, one can mask the legitimate domain as a third or fourth level subdomain of a bad persons' domain. Very long URLs like this are more difficult to parse and read on a mobile phone. Content Management Systems for websites over the years unfortunately generate long URLs that do work to direct persons to websites but are obscure for persons to parse. So an example of a bad URL : https://community.icann.org.can.work/display/atlarge/2020-01-27+At-Large+Tec... Persons glancing at this URL would see icann.org and may think everything is fine and go ahead and click on the URL when its not. Nearly all browser vendors are using the Public Suffix List at https://publicsuffix.org/ which started as a Mozilla Initiative.
From the Public Suffix List website, a "public suffix" is one under which Internet users can (or historically could) directly register names. Tracking this is important to ensure that a website can't set cookies that other websites can read or modify under the same domain.
What the episode showed was that Mozilla Firefox (at least on the desktop) highlights the part of the domain that is the public suffix by making it slightly bolder than the rest of the URL. It is however to me, very, very subtle and I wish that Mozilla (and other browsers) make the public suffix part more bold or even a slightly bigger font size to alert users as to the true domain being viewed. Some mobile browsers are showing only the domain and not the rest of the URL and allow for the full URL can be viewed and edited when you tap on the URL bar which also helps. Kind Regards, Dev Anand Teelucksingh On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 3:23 PM Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Baruch <apisan@unam.mx> wrote:
Dev,
thanks a lot for sending this. While at first it may seem off-topic, it cuts deeply into very relevant questions for us: is this just one more iteration of "domain names will cease to be relevant soon" or is it a move or trend that will definitely undermine their importance and therefore also change the markets? If it proceeds, what balances of power will appear that we don't face now? One example: will the companies that operate search or that provide browsers (or both!) earn new powers? This is already being discussed elsewhere. What are the views that are relevant for ICANN Internet users At Large, and other stakeholders?
Yours,
Alejandro Pisanty
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Facultad de Química UNAM Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
+52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
+525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475 Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614 Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ------------------------------ *Desde:* At-Large [at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] en nombre de Dev Anand Teelucksingh [devtee@gmail.com] *Enviado el:* viernes, 07 de febrero de 2020 11:21 *Hasta:* At-Large Worldwide *Asunto:* [At-Large] Google Developers : Humans can't read URLs. How can we fix it? - HTTP 203
"In this episode, Jake makes the case that URLs are impossible for humans to interpret, especially when it comes to security. What are browsers doing today to overcome that? And, is there a better way"
Watch the 20 min episode : https://youtu.be/0-wB1VY3Nrc
Dev Anand
I viewed the video and my takeaway was that browsers can be configured for a role in building confidence in domain names. Very good discussion guys. CAS On Mon, 10 Feb 2020, 10:08 pm Dev Anand Teelucksingh, <devtee@gmail.com> wrote:
Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Baruch <apisan@unam.mx> wrote: "is this just one more iteration of "domain names will cease to be relevant soon" or is it a move or trend that will definitely undermine their importance and therefore also change the markets?"
I think no, this is not an iteration about domain names becoming irrelevant. The discussion focused on how to ensure browser users can identify what domain they are visiting so IMO, it strengthens the use of domain names by having users trust the domain they are visiting.
The challenge as I see it is with the prevalence of many new TLDs, the risk of phishing and malware attacks are higher where bad persons try to trick persons to either: - go to bad persons' website(s) at domains pretending to be another organisation/service in order to get user login credentials to such organisations/services or - open links to malware files and become infected.
So typically, bad persons would use typos that look similiar to the legitimate domain or add a few characters before or after the 2nd level domain So for example.com, there could be exannple.com , examp1e.com, eexamples.com and examples.com .
With more TLDs and wider use of ccTLDs, bad persons could also do things like examples.xyz, examp1e.tv and so on.
With longer URLs, one can mask the legitimate domain as a third or fourth level subdomain of a bad persons' domain. Very long URLs like this are more difficult to parse and read on a mobile phone. Content Management Systems for websites over the years unfortunately generate long URLs that do work to direct persons to websites but are obscure for persons to parse.
So an example of a bad URL :
https://community.icann.org.can.work/display/atlarge/2020-01-27+At-Large+Tec...
Persons glancing at this URL would see icann.org and may think everything is fine and go ahead and click on the URL when its not.
Nearly all browser vendors are using the Public Suffix List at https://publicsuffix.org/ which started as a Mozilla Initiative. From the Public Suffix List website, a "public suffix" is one under which Internet users can (or historically could) directly register names. Tracking this is important to ensure that a website can't set cookies that other websites can read or modify under the same domain.
What the episode showed was that Mozilla Firefox (at least on the desktop) highlights the part of the domain that is the public suffix by making it slightly bolder than the rest of the URL. It is however to me, very, very subtle and I wish that Mozilla (and other browsers) make the public suffix part more bold or even a slightly bigger font size to alert users as to the true domain being viewed.
Some mobile browsers are showing only the domain and not the rest of the URL and allow for the full URL can be viewed and edited when you tap on the URL bar which also helps.
Kind Regards,
Dev Anand Teelucksingh
On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 3:23 PM Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Baruch < apisan@unam.mx> wrote:
Dev,
thanks a lot for sending this. While at first it may seem off-topic, it cuts deeply into very relevant questions for us: is this just one more iteration of "domain names will cease to be relevant soon" or is it a move or trend that will definitely undermine their importance and therefore also change the markets? If it proceeds, what balances of power will appear that we don't face now? One example: will the companies that operate search or that provide browsers (or both!) earn new powers? This is already being discussed elsewhere. What are the views that are relevant for ICANN Internet users At Large, and other stakeholders?
Yours,
Alejandro Pisanty
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Facultad de Química UNAM Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
+52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
+525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475 Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614 Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ------------------------------ *Desde:* At-Large [at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] en nombre de Dev Anand Teelucksingh [devtee@gmail.com] *Enviado el:* viernes, 07 de febrero de 2020 11:21 *Hasta:* At-Large Worldwide *Asunto:* [At-Large] Google Developers : Humans can't read URLs. How can we fix it? - HTTP 203
"In this episode, Jake makes the case that URLs are impossible for humans to interpret, especially when it comes to security. What are browsers doing today to overcome that? And, is there a better way"
Watch the 20 min episode : https://youtu.be/0-wB1VY3Nrc
Dev Anand
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Just to throw a little more into the mix there are also "homonym" attacks, for example sneaking a Cyrillic (e.g., Russian) 'o' into microsoft . com, they look the same as a Latin-1 'o' but are encoded differently. Some browsers recognize that and will display "punycode", xn-blahblah, rather than the graphical version but there are all sorts of places this might be abused (e.g., a link in an email or sms, etc.) My real point is it's a big and, I like to think, active topic. A lot of it falls more into the realm of the IETF, engineering issues, and human factors engineering, rather than policy at this point other than perhaps supporting whatever the gearheads come up with to mitigate all this and to turn any engineering recommendations into workable policy. And education about the problem of course. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*
Since this thread is touching a lot on IDNs - and related problems (real or perceived) - may I suggest the interested people to join the ALAC IDN-WG, where these issues can be thoroughly discussed. At the moment the WG is not very active, but Satish - the Chair - is bringing it back to life. So it would be a great moment for bringing some discussion over there, also in view of the greater attention that this topic is receiving. Cheers, Roberto
On 11.02.2020, at 21:12, bzs@theworld.com wrote:
Just to throw a little more into the mix there are also "homonym" attacks, for example sneaking a Cyrillic (e.g., Russian) 'o' into microsoft . com, they look the same as a Latin-1 'o' but are encoded differently.
Some browsers recognize that and will display "punycode", xn-blahblah, rather than the graphical version but there are all sorts of places this might be abused (e.g., a link in an email or sms, etc.)
My real point is it's a big and, I like to think, active topic.
A lot of it falls more into the realm of the IETF, engineering issues, and human factors engineering, rather than policy at this point other than perhaps supporting whatever the gearheads come up with to mitigate all this and to turn any engineering recommendations into workable policy. And education about the problem of course.
-- -Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo* _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
participants (4)
-
bzs＠theworld.com -
Carlton Samuels -
Dev Anand Teelucksingh -
Roberto Gaetano