“There’s no surefire way to detect either malicious Google ads or punycode-encoded URLs. Posting https://ķeepass.info into all five major browsers leads to the imposter site.”
Ah, yes. But, using Privacy Browser Android, the true punycode URL of https://xn--eepass-vbb.info/ is revealed.
@lanodan I think it has a lot more to do with the GUI code than the rendering engine code. In my testing, Chrome and Firefox for Android do not display the correct URL. Lightning behaves correctly the same as Privacy Browser Android. FOSS Browser and Fulguris (a fork of Lightning) change the URL, but they cover it up with the website title, so you can't see it unless you tap to edit it.
@lanodan “This function provides protection against IDN homograph attacks, so **in some cases** the host part of the returned URI may be in Punycode if the safety check fails.”
Do you know which are the cases where it displays the punycode and which are the cases where it doesn’t?
@lanodan I have to disagree with you on the password manager. Everyone should use an offline password manager that does not sync to some cloud service, but for security and privacy reasons, nobody should use a password manager that integrates with their web browser.
You never want something that is processing untrusted data inputs (a web browser) having any connection path to the data store that holds your passwords.
@lanodan That is a good distinction, but even integrated is too much of a security compromise for me to be able to recommend it to anyone.
@lanodan If you are typing a password into a website, it better be because you typed the URL or loaded it from your own bookmark.
If you go back to the original article, it was about someone downloading a compromised version of KeePass from an invalid website (ironic in the context of a discussion of password managers). KeePass is what I use myself, but I don't tend to find their website through a Google ad before initiating the download.
@lanodan
@lanodan So, use bookmarks to access sites where you already have accounts and type the URL yourself for new sites where you want to create accounts. None of that needs password manager integration and all the potential security and privacy pitfalls that entails.
@lanodan That’s a good point. But still, no need for password manager integration for those.