Typosquatting

Typosquatting (also called URL hijacking) involves registering domains that are slight misspellings or variations of legitimate websites: gooogle.com, amzon.com, microsft.com. Users who mistype a URL land on the attacker’s site, which typically mimics the real site’s login page.

When victims enter their credentials on the typosquatted domain, the attacker captures them. Some typosquatted sites also distribute malware through fake software downloads.

Defenses include bookmarking important sites, using a password manager (which matches credentials to exact domains and won’t autofill on misspelled domains), implementing browser security extensions that warn about suspicious domains, and organizations proactively registering common misspellings of their own domain.