• lunarul@lemmy.world
    2·
    18 days ago

    I can’t imagine how something like homograph attacks can happen accidentally. If someone does this in code, they probably intended to troll other contributors.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      18 days ago

      Multilingual users have multiple keyboard layouts, usually switching with Alt+Shift or similar key combo. If you’re multitasking you might not realize you’re on the wrong keyboard layout. So say you’re chatting with someone in Russian, then you alt+tab to your source code and you spot a typo - you wrote my_var_xopy instead of my_var_copy. You delete the x and type in c. You forget this happened and you never realized the keyboard layout was wrong.

      That c that you typed is now actually с, Cyrillic Es.

      What do you say, is that realistic enough?

      • lunarul@lemmy.world
        4·
        18 days ago

        I use multilingual keyboard layouts, so I know that at least on Windows the selected layout is specific to each window. If I chat with someone in one language, then switch to my IDE, it will not keep the layout I used in the chat window.

        But I also have accidently hit the combination to change layouts while doing something, so it can happen. I’m just surprised that Cyrillic с is on the same key as C, instead of S.

        • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          18 days ago

          I believe there’s a setting for whether it’s global or per-window. Personally I prefer global, because I can’t keep track of more than one state and I absolutely hate the experience of typing something and getting a different language than you expect.