IDN Flaw sees address spoofing in majority of non-IE browsers

[Steve]

From The Register:

The bug could be exploited by registering domain names with certain international characters - which look like other commonly-used characters - in order to hoodwink users into believing they on a different, trusted site. As such, the bug creates a new wheeze for phishing attacks. For Germans to use national German characters in ".de" domains, for example, is one thing, but the use of national characters has been extended to the international domain space (.com, .net an .org) and extends the scope for confusion.

[The article]

Now, everybody is playing this off as a really big problem and I admit this is a serious issue. However, most people using the affected browsers (Mozilla/Firefox, Opera, Konqueror) will be able to spot a phishing scam a mile off anyway. Granted, there will be some still 'vulnerable' but this won't be half as bad as if it was with Internet Explorer.

Nevertheless I hope a solution is found soon.