The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had recently agreed upon the introduction of domain names that will be composed entirely of non-Roman scripts and though this move has been welcomes by many, experts have warned that such domain names could become sweet targets for cyber criminals, especially when it comes to phishing and email scams. Citing the examples of some of the biggest websites such as Apple, Yahoo, Google and PayPal, security analysts have stated that, the domain addresses could be easily duplicated in Cyrillic scripts, such as Russian.

According to Simon Bennett (Lawyer, Arnold & Porter),

“With Cyrillic, Korean, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese scripts now possible, this threatens to be like a hydra. You cut off one head and another grows in its place. They [Icann] seem to have started the process of allowing people to register domain names in non-Roman characters but don’t seem to have put in place anything that obligates any registry to safeguard trademark rights or the rights of legitimate businesses that use the same name.”

There is also the possibility of brand abuse with the use of non-Roman scripts as the website names that are currently quite difficult to duplicate due to the Roman scripts, would become easily available to attackers who could then use them for phishing scams and the resemblance would be uncanny, thereby deceiving the users to a large extent. Analysts have also stated that, the languages such as Chinese and Japanese that use traditional images rather than words in their scripts, could become a major hurdle for the foreign companies, as they will be mulling as to whether their website should sound like their name or should the site name should deliver the meaning of the services.

Via Times Online.